The great texts of the Bible

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THE
GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE

<v;vn^\'

THE GREAT T
OF THE BIBLE

EDITED BY THE REV.

BDITI

JAMES 'Hastings, d.d.

EDITOR OF "THE EXPOSITORY TIMES" "THE DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE'

"THE DICTIONARY OF CHRIST AND THE GOSPELS" AND

"THE ENCYCLOPiEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS"

PSALM GXIX. to SONG OF SONGS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SGRIBNER'S SONS

EDINBURGH : T. & T. CLARK

1914

CONTENTS

TOPICS.

The Light of God's Word

Thb Opening of God's Word .

Help from beyond the Hills .

Guardianship in Daily Life .

The House of the Lord

Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy

The Gifts op Sleep

De Profundis

Unity ....

The Encompassing God .

The Searcher of Hearts

The Good Providence of God .

Tenderness and Power.

The Beginning op "Wisdom

Trust in the Lord

The Two Paths .

The Heart

Wronging the Soul

The Winning of Souls

The Sovereignty op Providence

The Lamp op the Lord .

The Training op Children

The Buying and Selling op the Truth

The Golden Mean

Eternity in the Heart

Do it Well and Do it Now

Giving and Receiving .

After that the Judgment

Timely Remembrance

The Whole Duty of Man

Separated Lovers

Spring-Time

In Praise of Love

FASB

1
17
31
47
63
81
93
111
125
143
155
171
183
195
209
225
239
363
267
279
293
309
325
343
359
377
389
405
419
431
443
457
469

VI

CONTENTS

TEXTS.

Psalms.

CXIX. 106
CXIX. 130
CXXI. 1,2
CXXI. 8
CXXII. 1
CXXVI. 6
CXXVII. 2
CXXX. 1
CXXXIII. 1
CXXXIX. 5
CXXXIX. 23, 24
CXLV. 16 .
CXLVII. 3, 4 .

I. 7

III. 5, 6

IV. 18, 19
IV. 23

VIII. 36

XI. 30

XVI. 33

XX. 27

XXII. 6

XXIII. 23

XXX. 8

III. 11
IX. 10
XI. 1
XI. 9
XII. 1
XII. 13

I. 7

II. 11-13
VIII. 6, 7 .

Proverbs.

ECCLESIASTES.

Song of Songs.

PAGB

3

19
33
49
65

83
95
113
127
145
157
173
185

197

211
227
241
255
269
281
295
311
;527
345

361
379
391
407
421
433

445
459
471

The Light of God's Word.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — I

Literature.

Aglionby (F. K.), The Better Choice, 21.

Armstrong (W.), Five-Minute Sermons to Children, 20, 32.

Beecher (H. W.), Sunday Evening Sermons, 31.

Bevan (S. P.), Talks to Boys and Girls, 75.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, i. 113.

Fleming (A. G.), Silver Wings, 116.

Griffiths (W.), Onward and Upward, 13.

Hamilton (J.), Works, ii. 5.

Hodgson (A. P.), Thoughts for the King's Children, 10.

Lamb (R.), In the Twilight, 76.

Liddon (H. P.), Advent in St. Paul's, 471.

Macmillan (H.), The Spring of the Day, 197.

Norton (J. N.), Old Paths, 18.

Phillips (S.), The Heavenward Way, 39.

Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 312 (F. W. Farrar).

Church of England Pulpit, lii. 38 (J. B. Crozier).

Church Pulpit Year Book, 1913, p. 249.

Churchman's Pulpit : Sermons to the Yoi;ng, xvi. 77 (J. R. Macduff).

Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., xiv. 331 (W. Burrows).

Eomiletic Review, liii. 377 (H. Anstadt) ; Ix. 237 (Q. H. Ferris).

Preacher's Magazine, iv. 127 (R. Brewin).

Record, Dec. 11, 1908 (E. S. Talbot).

The Light of God's Word.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet,
And light unto my path.— Ps. cxix. 105.

1. This psalm is a hymn in praise of the Mosaic Law, which,
either as God's law, or His statutes, or His commandments, or
His testimonies, or His precepts, or His ceremonies, or His truth,
or His way, or His righteousness, is referred to in every single
verse of it except two. There is not much reason for doubting
that it was written quite at the close of the Jewish Captivity in
Babylon by some pious Jew who had felt all the unspeakable
bitterness of the Exile, the insults and persecution of the
heathen, the shame, the loss of heart, the "trouble above
measure " which that compulsory sojourn in the centre of debased
Eastern heathendom must have meant for him. The writer was
a man for whom sorrow did its intended work, by throwing him
back upon God, His ways, and His will ; and so in this trouble,
when all was dark around, and hope was still dim and distant,
and the heathen insolent and oppressive, and the temptations to
religious laxity or apostasy neither few nor slight, he still could
say, " Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and light unto my path."

2. The witness of the captive Jew who wrote the psalm,
thinking only of the Mosaic Law, has been echoed again and again
by Christians, with reference to the whole Bible — both the Old
Testament and the New — and in a deeper sense. They have
found this book a lamp unto their feet, and light unto their path.
They have found that the two parts of the verse are not differentV
ways of saying the same thing. The Word of God is a lamp or
lantern to the feet by night ; it is a light, as that of the sun, by
day. It makes provision for the whole of life ; it is the secret of
life's true sunshine ; it is the guide when all around is dark. It
thus throws light on the " path " and the " feet," on the true

3

4 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

course which thought and conduct should follow, and on the
efforts which are necessary to that end. With the Word of God
at hand, we should be in no doubt about the greatest practical
question with which man has to deal : the true road to everlasting
happiness in another life.

The Function of the Bible.

1. The text aptly describes the true function of the Holy
Scriptures for the Christian soul. Their use in the first instance
is practical, not speculative. It is in the earnest, devotional
study of the Bible that we may look to obtain light. This is the
use of it which all alike must make, whether child or peasant or
philosopher, if they will become " wise unto salvation." The
Bible was designed to be to us in our journey through life what

' a lantern is to a wayfarer who would pass in safety along a
dangerous pathway during a dark night. He wants the light to
fall upon the ground over which he must walk at each successive
step. The illustration is simple enough, but not so the carrying
out of the principle with which it deals. The ease or difficulty
will vary with the disposition of those who use the Bible. They
who seek to know the truth that they may walk in it, who would
know the will of God that they may do it, shall never lack the
light ; they will both perceive and know what things they ought
to do. On the other hand, those who do not strive by God's help

A to live up to the light which they have, those who know what
they ought to do and do not make the honest effort to do it, those
who shrink from knowing their duty, or wish to get it altered — to
such the sacred oracles give no message; no light from God's
Word will fall upon their path. Such persons are like Saul,
whom the Lord would not answer by Urim and Thummim. Let
us but will to do God's will, and we shall never lack guidance
in the way of duty.

^ The Society of Illuminating Engineers and others too have
long sought for a light which would, by excluding the ultra-
violet rays, become fog-penetrating. An inventor has just made
the desired discovery, and produced an electric lamp which can
penetrate the densest fog. The Bible in the world of the soul is

PSALM cxix. 105 5

such a lamp. It is effective alike by what it includes and by ^'
what it excludes. The sincere, prayerful student of the sacred
page will find his way through black and blinding illusions and
delusions. Let me use it as " a lamp to my feet " for practical,
personal uses ; not as a Chinese lantern, engaging the fancy by
virtue of its artistry and imagery, but as a signal lamp on the
railway, a Davy lamp in the mine, an electric lamp in the fog.
And the more we apply the sacred truths to action and experi-
ence, the more precious and luminous do they become. " The
man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he acts '
never acts," writes Amiel ; but, bringing the statutes, command-
ments, and promises to bear on life, they become ever clearer, and
more fully evince their divinity.^

^ Let no man confound the voice of God in His "Works with
the voice of God in His Word ; they are utterances of the same
infinite heart and will ; they are in absolute harmony ; together
they make up "that undisturbed song of pure concent"; one
" perfect diapason " ; but they are distinct ; they are meant to be
so. A poor traveller, "weary and waysore," is stumbling in
unknown places through the darkness of a night of fear, with no
light near him, the everlasting stars twinkling far off in their
depths, and the yet unrisen sun, or the waning moon, sending up
their pale beams into the upper heavens, but all this is distant
and bewildering for his feet, doubtless better much than outer
darkness, beautiful and full of God, if he could have the heart to
look up, and the eyes to make use of its vague light ; but he is
miserable, and afraid, his next step is what he is thinking of ; a
lamp secured against all winds of doctrine is put into his hands,
it may in some respects widen the circle of darkness, but it will
cheer his feet, it will tell them what to do next. What a silly
fool he would be to throw away that lantern, or draw down the
shutters, and make it dark to him, while it sits, " i' the centre and
enjoys bright day," and all upon the philosophical ground that its
light was of the same kind as the stars, and that it was beneath
the dignity of human nature to do anything but struggle on and
be lost in the attempt to get through the wilderness and the
night by the guidance of those " natural " lights, which, though
they are from heaven, have so often led the wanderer astray.
The dignity of human nature indeed ! Let him keep his lantern
till the glad sun is up, with healing under his wings. Let him
take good heed to the " sure " Xoyov while in this ahyjinp^ ro'rnjj —
this dark, damp, unwholesome place, " till the day dawn and
puafopog — the day-star — arise." ^

* W. L. Watkinson. * Dr. John Brown, Horce Subsecivce, ii. 470,

6 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

2. If it be the case that, in a great proportion of cases, the
Bible fails of its true purpose, and men read it, if at all, without
securing the gift which it is meant to bestow, what is the reason ?
The answer is, that certain conditions are attached to the guiding
and illuminating office of the Bible, and that, if it fails to guide
and enlighten, these conditions are not complied with. What are
they ? One important condition is that the Bible should be
diligently searched for those truths, those precepts, those
examples, which will directly guide us through life to our eternal
home. But, in order to succeed in this search for the true import
of Scripture, we need method, order, regularity, purpose in reading
it. Just as a single purpose in life, steadily pursued, lights up
surrounding interests, and quickens energy for a hundred objects
besides itself, so, in reading the Bible, the mental intentness
which is necessary to the steady pursuit of one truth sheds rays
of intelligence on other truths which sparkle around it. The
keen searcher for diamonds tells us that he often finds, over and
above that for which he is looking, crystals and precious stones
which intrude themselves on his gaze in the course of his
search,

^ In joy and sorrow, in health and in sickness, in poverty and
in riches, in every condition of life, God has a promise stored up
in His Word for you. If you are impatient, sit down quietly and
commune with Job. If you are strong-headed, read of Moses and
Peter. If you are weak-kneed, look at Elijah. If there is no
song in your heart, listen to David. If you are a politician, read
Daniel. If you are getting sordid, read Isaiah. If you are chilly,
read of the beloved disciple. If your faith is low, read Paul. If
you are getting lazy, study James. If you are losing sight of the
future, read in Eevelation of the promised land.^

3. The Word of God is a light to us, not because we say so,
but when we carefully observe everything on which its rays are
falling — the path we tread, the objects we pass, the companions
of our journey, the view it gives us of ourselves — and when we
forthwith rouse ourselves into action. An example which we
have striven to follow, a precept which we have honestly
endeavoured to obey, and which is by the effort indented on the
soul, means much more than it could have meant if we had read

> D. L. Moody.

PSALM cxix. 105 7

it with cheap admiration and passed on. Just so far as the will
is exerted in order to make truth practically our own, does truth
become to us present and real ; not merely a light without, but a ,
light within us ; a light transferred from the pages of the Bible to
the inner sanctuary in which conscience treasures up its guiding
principles ; a light which illuminates the humblest path with the
radiance of the just, " shining more and more unto the perfect
day." The clearest evidence of the divinity of the Book is to be
derived from personal experience, the inward sense of its power —
a kind of witness that admits of daily renewal and lies within
the reach of any thoughtful and devout reader. Only let Holy
Scripture have its assigned place in the regulation of conduct
and life, and the supernatural element in its composition will for
certain come to light. Christ made the experimental to be the
supreme test or line of proof : " If any man willeth to do his will,
he shall know of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether I
speak from myself " (John vii. 17).

^ In another letter to an old pupil, full of profound ethical
and spiritual counsel. Miss Pipe writes : " Do thy work, and leave
sorrow and joy to come of themselves. Do not limit the work to
the outward activities of life. By work I mean not these only,
though these certainly, but also the regulation of our moral
feelings, — strive against pride, vanity, ostentation, self-righteous-
ness, self-satisfaction and dissatisfaction, resentment, impatience,
alienation, discontent, indolence, peevishness, hatred or dislike,
inconstancy, cowardice, — untiring, hopeful effort after obedience
to the will of God, and resolute, believing war with every temper
contrary to the mind of Christ. It can be done, and it must be
done. It is promised : it is commanded : it is possible. If you
wish for something that you may not lawfully grasp, or cannot
grasp, begin to fight, and never leave off until the wish is
mastered and annihilated as completely as if it had never been
once felt. This must be done not by desperate struggling so
much as by calm, resolved, fixed faith. Do thus thy work, and
leave sorrow and joy to come of themselves. . . . You see to
obedience, faith and righteousness. God will give you peace and
joy in such measure as He pleases, and in increasing measure as
the years go by. Until I was five or six and twenty, I think I
had no peace or joy at all. Indeed, I never found any until I
had given up caring for, praying for, hoping for, or in any way
seeking after, comfort and feeling. I took up with just an

8 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

historical faith in the Bible and said : He will not make me glad,
but He shall not find me, therefore, swerve from following Him.
I will do His holy will so far as I can, I will serve Him as well as
I can, though not perhaps so well as others to whom the joy of
the Lord gives strength. I will be content to do without these
inward rewards, but with or without such wages I will do my
best work for the Master. With this resolve, arrived at after
years of weary strife, rest began for me, and deepened afterwards
into peace, and heightened eventually into joy, and now from
year to year, almost from week to week, an ever greatening
blessedness." ^

II.

The Eight Use of the Bible.

1. If the Bible, then, is to do its work, we must be careful to
N act upon each truth which it teaches us as we learn it. For
there is one great difference between moral or religious knowledge
on the one hand and purely secular knowledge on the other, a
difference which we cannot lay too closely to heart. It is that,
while secular knowledge is, as a rule, remembered until the
memory decays, moral and religious knowledge is soon forgotten
if it is not acted on. The reason for this is that in the one case
the will is interested, and in the other it is not. The will is
interested in our losing sight, as soon as may be, of a precept
which we disobey, or of a doctrine which we have professed, but
which we feel condemns us; and so the will exerts a steady,
secret pressure upon the intellect, a pressure which anticipates
the ordinary decomposition and failure of memory, and extrudes
the unwelcome precept or doctrine, gradually but surely, from
among the subjects which are present to thought.

^ When the Duke of Wellington accepted the commission to
form a Government in 1834, it was resolved to prorogue Parlia-
ment, and Lord Lyndhurst was desired by the King to go to Lord
Grey and tell him such was his pleasure. Lyndhurst forgot it !
In after-times, those who write the history of these days will
probably discuss the conduct of the great actors, and it will not
fail to be matter of surprise that such an obvious expedient was
not resorted to in order to suspend violent discussions. Among

* A. M. Stoddart, Life and Letters of EanrMh E. Pipe, 119.

PSALM cxix. 105 9

the various reasons that will be imagined and suggested, I doubt
if it will occur to anybody that the real reason was that it was
forgotten}

2. The many-sidedness of the Bible, its immense resources,
the great diversity of its contents and character, its relations with
ages 80 wide apart as are the age of Moses and the age of St.
Paul, its vast stores of purely antiquarian lore, its intimate bear-
ings upon the histories of great peoples in antiquity, of which
independently we know not a little, such as the Egyptians and the
Assyrians, the splendour and the pathos of its sublime poetry —
all these bristle with interest for an educated man, whether he be
a good man or not. The Bible is a storehouse of literary beauties,
of historical problems, of materials for refined scholarship and
the scientific treatment of language, of dififerent aspects of social
theories or of the philosophy of life. A man may easily occupy
himself with one of these subjects for a whole lifetime and never
approach the one subject* which makes the Bible what it is.
And, indeed, much of the modern literature about the Bible is no
more distinctly related to religion than if it had been written
about Homer, or Herodotus, or Shakespeare. It deals only with
those elements of the Bible which the Bible has in common with
other and purely human literature ; it treats the Bible as literature
simply, and not as the vehicle of something which distinguishes
it altogether from all merely human books. And, therefore, a
serious effort is needed to set these lower aspects and interests of
the Bible sufficiently aside in order to study its true and deepest
meaning — the message which it conveys from God to the soul of
man.

^ There is a story told of a man crossing a mountain in Carnar-
vonshire one stormy night. It was so cold that in order to shelter
his hands from the biting wind, he put the lantern under his
cloak, and as the moon shone dimly through the clouds he thought
he could trace his way without the lantern. All at once a gust
of wind blew aside his cloak ; the light shone forth, and suddenly
revealed the edge of a large slate quarry, over which, in another
moment, he would have fallen and have been dashed to pieces.
He soon retraced his steps, but he did not hide the lantern under
his cloak that night again. There are many who think that they

* The Greville Memoirs, iii. 50.

10 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

can go through life — dark and dangerous as the way often is —
without this lamp of God's truth ; they therefore hide it out of
sight, or neglect to trim it by constant and prayerful study. In
many instances they do not find out their mistake and folly until
it is too late. Others have had this light unexpectedly cast upon
their path, to reveal to them some great danger ; thus their steps
have been suddenly arrested, and they have learnt never to try
to do without that light again.^

3. God hides Himself from those who would saunter with
easy off-handedness through the pages of the Bible, as though
they were taking a stroll up and down a back garden, and
languidly noting the Immensities as if they were daisies or
dandelions growing on either side of the path ; as though, forsooth,
nothing was so easy of comprehension at a glance as the Self-
unveiling of the Eternal Mind ! No, we find in the Bible what we
J Beek in it: we find that which we can find as well in other
literatures if that is all for which we search; ^but we find
depths and heights, glories and abysses, which language can but
suggest, and thought can but dimly perceive, if we are indeed,
and with earnest prayer, seeking Him whose Word the Bible is.
Only to those who sincerely desire and labour to have it so, is the
Bible a lamp unto the feet, and light unto the path. The Bible
was given us by God to shed light on the purity and vileness of
our souls, to brace our wills in the hour of temptation, to elevate
our thoughts amid the strife for bread, to lift our drowsy eyes
to the sunlit summits of faith and prayer, and to send a thrill of
Divine aspiration through lives that are ever becoming stupefied
amid the murky damps of life's low levels. If we seek for a spirit
of uncompromising and ringing righteousness that shall keep us
from making a truce with wrong, we find it in the pages of
Jeremiah. If we look for a valuation of life that puts first
things first, we follow St. Paul over mountains and seas, and
hear him say, " Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that
I might finish my course with joy." If we look for a pattern of
a life truly Divine, and wish to see what God would do if He
were a man, we walk with Christ around the Sea of Galilee.
Indeed, it is in the light of His character that we interpret the
whole Book.

^ D. Davies, Talks vnth Men, Women and Children, i. 114.

PSALM cxix. 105 n

^ When a man holds out his lantern, and asks you if there is
a light in it, you may be able to convince him that there is ; but
the very circumstance of his asking such a question makes you
fear that he is blind; and at all events five minutes of clear
vision would be worth a world of your arguments. When a man
asks. Do you think the Bible is inspired ? Is it really the light
of God which is shining there ? you may prove it by unanswerable
argument, and yet you cannot help regretting that he should need
to appeal to others ; nor can you help remembering how it stands
written, " The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit
of God : for they are foolishness unto him : neither can he know
them, because they are spiritually discerned." To any one who
finds himself in this predicament, the best advice we can give is,
Eead and pray. Pray, " Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold
wondrous things out of thy law." And as you pray this prayer,
read the Book, and ponder its sayings ; and better feelings will
spring up in your mind — holy thoughts and loving, grateful
thoughts towards Christ, kind thoughts towards your fellows,
devout and contrite thoughts towards God. " The commandment
of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes " ; and it opens the eyes
by rejoicing the heart.^

III.

The Uniqueness of the Bible.

1. Do we value, as we ought, the priceless heritage that we
have received in the Word of God ? As a rule we value things
just in proportion to their rarity. Many people will give fabulous
sums of money for a book, a picture, a piece of china, an old
article of furniture, and even a postage stamp, if it happens to be
rare. But what is common, and can be purchased anywhere for
a few pence, is, generally speaking, but Uttle valued. This, it is
to be feared, is too often the case with regard to the value that
we put on the Bible. When copies of the Holy Scriptures were
few in number and very costly, when the Bible was chained to
the desk in our churches for fear that it might be stolen, people
were much more eager to " read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest "
the teaching of God's Word than they are to-day.

^ I have been seriously perplexed to know how the religious
feeling which is the essential base of conduct can be kept up with-

' J. Hamilton, Works, ii. 17.

12 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

out the Bible. By the study of what other book could children
be so humanized and made to feel that each figure in that vast
historical procession fills like themselves but a momentary inter-
space between the two eternities, and earns the blessings or curses
of all time according to its effort to do good and hate evil, even
as they also earn it by their works ? ^

2. Other books are for special times or separate races; the
^ Bible has been for every clime. Other books are for the poor oi
for the rich, the great or the obscure ; this Book, ignoring the
inch-high distinction of rank and wealth, regards men solely in
their relationship to God as heirs of the common mysteries of
life and death, of corruption and immortality. Other books are
for the mature or the youthful ; this Book alone neither wearies the
aged nor repels the child. Other books are for the learned or the
ignorant ; this Book, in the sweetest and simplest elements of its
\j revelation, is not more dear to the German philosopher than to the
negro's child. In it mind becomes spontaneously luminous, heart
flashes to heart with electric thrill. The North American Indian
reads it in his rude wigwam on the icy coasts of Hudson's Bay ;
the Kaffir in his kraal, the savage of the Pacific in his coral isle,
the poor old woman in the squalid slum, no less than the emperor
in his royal chamber and the scholar in his college-room. And,
as St. Augustine said, we shall find here what we shall not find
in Plato or in Aristotle, in Seneca or Marcus Aurelius : " Come
unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest." This Book it was that fired the eloquence of Chrysostom
j and St. Augustine, that inspired the immortal song of Dante and
of Milton ; Shakespeare and Wordsworth and Tennyson are full of
it ; it kindled the genius of Luther, the burning zeal of Whitefield,
the bright imagination of Bunyan. With the hermits it made the
wilderness blossom as the rose, with the martyrs it was as the
whistling wind amidst the torturing flames ; it sent the missionaries
to plant the Kose of Sharon alike in the burning wastes of Africa
and amid the icy hills of Nova Zembla ; it inspired the pictures
of Angelico and Eaphael, the music of Handel and of
Mendelssohn.

^ I grant you that the Bible will have no power over my life
1 T. H. Huxley.

PSALM cxix. 105 13

if ever it ceases to command my conscience, or appeal to my
judgment. It may contain passages of transcendent beauty that
touch my aesthetic sense. It may arouse my curiosity by the
light it sheds on the customs of strange people in the far-distant
past. It may even start the tears, like the memories aroused by
the sweet echoes of the prayer of a child. But its grip on my
life will be gone. Of what use is a " lamp unto my feet " that
goes out on the edge of the first precipice I meet ? If the Bible
deserves to be called " the Word of God," ought not its message to
be so plain, and clear, and reliable, that all honest and earnest
men who turn to its pages shall be in substantial agreement as to
its teachings ? I answer that it ought. I say more, it is. In all
ages men have been in substantial agreement that in the pages
of the Bible, if read with discrimination, we can find the true
ideal of human life and character. I do not know one critic who
would deny the power of its pages to quicken faith, to renew hope,
to start the impulses of prayer, to thaw the frozen fountains of
the affections, and to help the man of God to be " furnished unto
every good work." But when men have gone to it to discover an
authoritative account of the making of the mountains and the
birth of the stars ; when men have gone to it to cover a complete
and infallible system of church polity that would lock up the
Kingdom of God in a first-century mausoleum ; when men have
gone to it to mine out proof-texts, to bolster up a system of
metaphysics and settle for ever the question between nominalism
and realism, between evolution and transcendence — then they
have been in a hopeless tangle of disagreement and strife.^

3. The lamp spoken of in the text has often been found fault
with. Complaint has been made of its shape, of the media
through which the light shines, of the materials of which the
reflectors are made, and of the manner in which the hght is
supplied. The answer that the lamp gives is to shine. No \/
modem invention has caused this lamp to be cast aside among old
lumber. It is sometimes covered over with dust, but its light is
so great that it pierces every obstruction, and is always sufficient
to guide heavenward. An American writer tells us that, going ,
two miles to read to a company, and at the close being about to
return through a narrow path in the woods where paths diverged,
he was provided with a torch of light wood or pitch pine. He
objected that it was too small, weighing not over half a pound.

^ G. H. Ferris, in The Eomiletic Review, Ix. 237.

14 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

" It will light you home," answered the host. And to all
objections came, " It will light you home." So if the Bible be
taken, it will be found sufficient to light us home. Some may
object to this part of the Bible and others to another part ; but
the answer of the Bible to all objectors is, " It will light you
home." This is our practical, everyday need — a light to guide us
home. The stars are sublime, meteors are dazzling ; but a lamp
shining in a dark place is close to our practical needs. Such is
the Word of God.

^ It is the darkness which makes the lantern so welcome.
And it is the darkness of the sick-room or the house of mourning
in which this " Night-lamp " emits such a soft and heavenly
radiance. You will find it so. Fond as you are of books, there
is only one that you will value at last ; with your head on the
pillow you will hardly care to be told that a new history is
published, or a marvellous epic. " No ; read me the Twenty-third
Psalm. Let me hear the fourteenth of John." When your
strength sinks yet lower it will for a moment rally the worn
faculties to hear the whisper, " My flesh and my heart faileth :
but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."
" Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil : for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy staff
they comfort me." ^

^ However mingled with mystery which we are not required
to unravel, or difficulties which we should be insolent in desiring
to solve, the Bible contains plain teaching for men of every rank
of soul and state in life, which so far as they honestly and
implicitly obey, they will be happy and innocent to the utmost
powers of their nature, and capable of victory over all adversities,
whether of temptation or pain. Indeed, the Psalter alone, which
practically was the service book of the Church for many ages,
contains merely in the first half of it the sum of personal and
social wisdom. The 1st, 8th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, and
24th psalms, well learned and believed, are enough for all personal
guidance ; the 48th, 72nd, and 75th have in them the law and
prophecy of all righteous government; and every real triumph
of natural science is anticipated in the 104th. For the contents
of the entire volume, consider what other group of historic and
didactic literaiture has a range comparable with it. There are —

i. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human
traditions founded on a true horror of sin.

» J. Hamilton, jrurks, ii. 30.

PSALM cxix. 105 15

ii. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth
is visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab races.

iii. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in
the moral law of all the civilized world.

iv. The story of the Kings — virtually that of all Kinghood,
in David, and of all Philosophy, in Solomon : culminating in the
Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and practical
wisdom of Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach.

V. The story of the Prophets — virtually that of the deepest
mystery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence.

vi. The story of Christ.

vii. The moral law of St. John, and his closing Apocalypse of
its fulfilment.

Think if you can match that table of contents in any other —
I do not say "book" but "literature." Think, so far as it is
possible for any of us — either adversary or defender of the faith —
to extricate his intelligence from the habit and the association of
moral sentiment based upon the Bible, what literature could have
taken its place, or fulfilled its function, though every library in
the world had remained, unravaged, and every teacher's truest
words had been written down.^

^ No metal can compare with gold, which is of small volume,
and of even quality, and easy of transport, and readily guarded,
and steady in value, and divisible without loss — besides being
beautiful, brilliant, and durable almost to eternity. This is why
all civilized nations have adopted it as the standard by which
they measure the value of every other kind of merchandise. We
habitually think and speak of wealth in terms of gold. Naturally,
the name of this standard metal comes to be used as a symbol or
metaphor to stand for whatever we prize as most precious of its
kind. There is a special sense in which the Bible deserves to be
called more golden than gold, because it remains the supreme
standard for the Christian Church, by comparison with which we
measure and test all spiritual values. " The Bible," said New-
man, " is the record of the whole revealed faith ; so far all parties
agree." It is the one book which preserves for us all that we
certainly know about the life and words and character of Christ
Himself. The teaching of the great Eeformers on this matter
has been summed up by a profound modern scholar, whose ver-
dict we may venture to quote : " If I am asked why I receive
Scripture as the Word of God and as the only perfect rule of
faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant

^ Ruskin, Our Fathers Have Told Us, chap, iji, § 37.

i6 THE LIGHT OF GOD'S WORD

Church, Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming
love of God, because in the Bible alone I iind God drawing near
to man in Christ Jesus, and declaring to us in Him His will for
our salvation. And this record I know to be true by the witness
of His Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other
than God Himself is able to speak such words to my soul." '

^ T. H. Darlow, More Golden than Gold, 9.

The Opening of God's Word.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 2

Literature.

Ellis (J.), Sermons in a Nutshell, 96.

Hind (T.), The Treasures of the Snow, 111.

Ker (J.), Sermons, ii. 186.

Stowell (H.), Sermons, 158.

Swing (D.), Truths for To-day, ii. 161.

Thomas (J.), Concerning the King, 50.

Children's Pulpit : Second Sunday in Advent, i. 136 (G. H. James).

Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 56 (F. W. Aveling) ; Ixviii. 28 (A.

Macarthur).
Churchman's Pulpit : Second Sunday in Advent, i. 403 (S. 0. Benton).
Eomiletic Review, xviii. 191.

The Opening of God's Word.

The opening of thy words giveth light ;

It giveth understanding unto the simple.— Ps. cxix. 130.

1. The section of the psalm in which the text occurs is a gem
of spiritual beauty. In verse after verse we are led through the
deep places of religious faith and love, and the Psalmist guides
our feet like one conversant with the holiest secrets of the
spiritual pilgrim's way. His thoughts are perennial, and his
words sound like the utterance of a believing soul here and now
in this present generation.

" God's word is wonderful, mysterious." It holds a great
mystery which is an offence to the pretentious intellectualism of
the wise, but in this very wonderfulness the obedient soul finds
rest. Through obedience comes fuller knowledge. " God's word
opens." And fuller knowledge creates fuller trust and devotion.
For "the light grows with the opening of the word," and in itl^
there is no darkness at all. New light produces new longing, at/
more eager "panting" of the spirit for the word of God. The
longing for God's word quickly reveals itself as a longing for
God Himself, a hungering for His mercy and love. In the vision \y
of God's face the desire for purity of life is intensified and the
soul pleads for deliverance from the "dominion of iniquity."
Then the man rises into full consciousness of his privilege as one
of God's freemen, whom no power shall enslave and no fetters
shall bind. "The oppression of man shall not hold him in
bondage." And so he stands in the gladness of spiritual strength
while God's face "shines upon him" like the sun from heaven.
Living in God's light, his heart, like God's, becomes full of com-
passion for a sinful world. As the Son of God in later days wept
for the sins and woes of Jerusalem, so this ancient Psalmist says :
" Mine eyes run down with rivers of water, because they observe

not thy law."

19

20 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

2. The object of Christian faith may be compared to a jewel
enclosed in a casket. The jewel is the Lord Jesus Christ; the
casket is the Bible. Now, we believe that a man may possess the
jewel who has never seen the casket, or who has got it in his
hands in an imperfect and broken form. There is such an efficacy
in the Lord Jesus Christ, such a fitness in Him for the sins and
sorrows and wants of poor fallen humanity, that the Holy Spirit
of God can bring Him home to the soul with saving power by a
small portion of knowledge. A single Gospel, a single Epistle, a
Psalm such as the Twenty-third, or a verse such as " God so
loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoso-
ever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life,"
if explained simply and brought home by God's Spirit, may
become God's power unto salvation. The Bible came to men in
fragments, piece after piece, through many generations, and a
fragment of it still does its proper work. It has a principle of
life that is complete in its separate parts, and you may see all its
truth in one text, as you can see all the sun's image in one drop of
dew in a flower. This is a wise. Divine arrangement, which may
reassure some who fear they are losing Christ, when the question
is about the meaning of some parts of the Bible. If a man were
so driven about on seas of difhculty that he could have only a
board or broken piece of the ship, it would " bring him safe to
land." Nevertheless, the care and completeness of the casket are
of very great moment. Our salvation may be gained by one
word about Christ, but our edification, our Christian comfort and
well-being, depend on the full word of Christ. Whenever He is
set forth, however dimly, there is something for us to learn,
something needful to make us thoroughly furnished unto every
good work. Here the Bible may be compared, not to a casket
enclosing a jewel, but to a piece of tapestry on which a figure is
inwoven. If it be mutilated, or the golden threads that meet and
intermingle be torn and tarnished, we lose, so far, the complete
image of truth that is the inheritance of the Church of Christ —
the inheritance which the Apostle thus describes : " Whatsoever
things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we
through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope."

^ Bartholdi's statue of "Liberty Enlightening the World"
occupies a fine position on Bedloes Island, which commands the

PSALM cxix. 130 21

approach to New York Harbour. It holds up a torch which is
lit at night by an immense electric light. The statue was cast
in portions in Paris. The separate pieces were very different,
and, taken apart, of uncouth shape. It was only when all was
brought together, each in its right place, that the complete design
was apparent. Then the omission of any one would have left
the work imperfect. In this it is an emblem of Holy Scripture.
We do not always see the object of certain portions ; nevertheless
each has its place, and the whole is a magnificent statue of Christ
Jesus, who is the true " Liberty Enlightening the World," casting
illuminative rays across the dark, rocky ocean of time, and guiding
anxious souls to the desired haven.^

I.

The Light Hid.

1. The word of God is not a book. There are plenty of Bibles^'
in the world to-day. Indeed there never was a time when so
many were distributed. The printing presses of Christendom
fairly groan with the innumerable volumes. Nor is the word of
God preaching. Churches abound and times of prosperity see
them built and rebuilt in ever more magnificent form. The
greater the wealth of the community and the more easy and
abundant its luxury, the more gorgeous become its churches, the
more elegant their ritual, and the more eloquent their preaching.
The word of God is the voice of God in a man's soul. As the
Saviour put it : " Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." That is the voice
which, through whatever channel it comes and in whatever words
it declares itself, becomes the compelling voice in a man's heart,
awakening him to a new consciousness of his relations to his
Maker.

2. The word of God is a living word, addressed to men, and it V^
brings the power of God Himself along with it. God did not
wait to speak to men until they had advanced so far that they
were able to provide themselves with some kind of record of what
He said. Far back in the infancy and childhood of the human

^ G. Jackson.

22 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

race, God condescended to men in their weakness and frailty,
spoke to them and made Himself intelligible, and lodged the
incorruptible seed in their hearts. All the epistles in those days
were living epistles, and the living word of God was not written
down, but passed like fire, with all its power to quicken and
redeem, from heart to heart.

3. No book can adequately express God's word. What God
had to say to men, what God at last actually did say to men, was
something too great for human words to record. " God," we
read in the Bible itself, " God, who at sundry times and in divers
manners spake in times past unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." " By his
Son" — revelation was consummated in Christ. "The Word be-
came flesh and dwelt among us . . . full of grace and truth,"
and Christ, in all the fulness of His grace and truth, is God's last
word to man. Could anybody produce an adequate record of
Christ ? Could any words that man could use ever tell all the
wonderful meaning of that manifestation of God ? Evangelists,
after they had done their best, declared that half had never been
told. You remember how the last of them, John, says at the end
of his Gospel, after he had tried to tell everything : " The world
itself would not contain the books that should be written." No
human word, the most wonderful or searching or patient, could
ever tell out for men everything that God meant when He sent
His Son to save the world.

^ You do right to call it " The Book," but you must not forget
that it is a book. It has the limitations of a book, the mistakes
of a book, the obscurities of a book, the impotence of a book.
And while it is the treasury of the most profound and unquestion-
able and authoritative in books, it is still only a book. There is
something more than the Book. There is a life, a living passion,
a moulding faith, a lifting hope ; and they are greater than the
Book.i

^ What is a word, a sentence, a book, a library ? What are
all libraries ? A mere peep into the inexpressible. The best
writers know this, and are not surprised if they find out their
most important things in between the lines, and the best readers
soon learn where to look for them. The best speakers know this,

» P. C. Ainsworth, A T/wriUess World, 15,

PSALM cxix. 130 23

and feel when all is done that they have left their most impressive
thoughts unspoken because they are unspeakable. However, the
best hearers understand perfectly well, perhaps better than if they
had been spoken. The poets know best how to use language.
They often express their most inexpressible, or evanescent thoughts
by means of repugnant, or somewhat paradoxical epithets ; as, for
example, Coleridge when he says :

The stilly murmur of the distant sea
Tells us of silence.

The belief that it is easy to speak plainly on these great subjects
is at the bottom of nearly all the mistakes which divide men in
religion, and, it may be added, of nearly all the scepticism which
has ever existed.^

4. Multitudes are unconscious of the highest truths, incapable
of them. They lack a sense, the sublimest sense of all, the faculty
to discern the reality of the Divine and eternal. Clever enough
in the arts of this life, they are stone-blind to the higher. Stand-
ing beneath the visible world, patent to us all, is an invisible under-
world of atoms, ether, colours, and subtle movements, which only
the disciplined sense of the scientist can detect and measure ; all
around us is another world of beauty, music, and poetry, perceived
and appreciated only by those possessed of the artistic sense ; and
again, above us is a supreme world of which God is the everlasting
light and glory, a realm evident only to those whose senses are
exercised in holy thought, constant purity, and willing obedience.

We say that the eye creates half that it sees : but no eye is
nearly so creative as a blind one ; and the proud critic, knowing
nothing as he ought to know, enlarges copiously and confidently
on his speculations. It is the astronomy of the blind. Competent
on questions of the lower spheres, these talkers are of no account
in regard to the reality and blessedness of personal godliness.
Their astronomy is the veriest superstition set forth in the language
of philosophy. The least in the Kingdom of God is greater than
these. Only men born again see the eternal light clearly and
steadily. Only as we experience the truths Divine do we com-
prehend them. Only as we do the will of God in daily obedience
do we know the doctrine. As Carlyle puts it : " He who has done
nothing has known nothing." Then do we see light in God's light,

' S. Hall.

24 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

and know the secret of the world, of life, of the future when we
believe in our heart and obey in our life.

That Thou art nowhere to be found, agree

Wise men, whose eyes are but for surfaces;

Men with eyes opened by the second birth.

To whom the seen, husk of the unseen is,

Descry the soul of everything on earth.

Who knows Thy ends, Thy means and motions see;

Eyes made for glory soon discover Thee.

^ Not very long ago The Times newspaper contained a corre-
spondence on the desirableness of science lecturers making their
great themes more clear to the ordinary audience. In defence
the lecturers maintained that it is almost impossible to make
lucid the problems of nature to listeners so entirely destitute of
knowledge and sympathy as the majority are. More difficult still
is it for certain minds to grasp mathematical or metaphysical
problems. How completely the ungifted and undisciplined stand
away from the mysteries of music ! While Glinka was writing
his immortal work, his wife complained before everyone that " he
was wasting ruled paper." The obtuse content themselves with
the sarcasm that "music is a noise costlier than other noises."
And as to the arts, the critics declare that genuine work is un-
intelligible to the crowd. " The beautiful is what your servant
instinctively thinks is frightful." ^

II.

The Light Eevealed.

" The opening of thy words giveth light." When the book is
opened, the light streams forth. The term translated "giveth
light " is a transitive verb which means " to cause to shine."
The direct object of the verb may be supplied by using any term
which will indicate the lover of God's word. "The opening of
God's Word maketh the attentive heart to shine." That is, the
Word of God gives light by enkindling the light of truth within
our souls. It is the same word that is used concerning God in
the 135th verse — "Make thy face to shine upon thy servant."
As His face shines upon us, He makes our hearts shine back upon
^ W. L. Watkinson, Life's Unexpected Issues, 27.

PSALM cxix. 130 25

Him and upon the world. He does not illuminate our path
mechanically, but sets His light within us livingly. He uses us,
not as passive reflectors of His brightness, but as burning and
shining lights.

1. We must learn to open the book. If God has given us a
heavenly Word, a Divinely communicated Word, the first thing
we should do is to learn diligently to understand that Word. If
God has spoken, then our greatest business is to try to understand
what God has said. Suppose a great prince or a great sage spoke
words of wisdom, and a thoughtless, foolish person rushed in and
began to babble his inanities, instead of trying to understand the
wisdam of the counsellor, what would you think ? You would
probably think more than you would like to say. Are we any
better, if, when God has spoken, and in the face of that utterance,
instead of setting ourselves in lowliness to understand His great
message, we go on babbling our own little passing speculations ?
We are people of many books to-day, and we speak of our fathers
sarcastically as " men of one book." There is no objection to many
books, but we would do well to get back to the one, and to under-
stand something more of the great mystery of Divine love which
God has revealed to us.

^ Mr. Moody tells us in an amusing way of his own experi-
ence : " I used at one time to read so many chapters a day, and if
I did not I thought I was cold and backsliding, but, mind you, if
a man had asked me an hour afterwards what I had read, I could
not have told him — I had forgotten nearly it all. When I was a
boy I used to hoe turnips on a farm, and I used to hoe them so
badly to get over so much ground that at night I had to put a
stick into the ground so as to know next morning where I had
left off." That was somewhat in the same fashion as much Bible
reading. A man will say : " Wife, did I read that chapter ? "
" Well," she says, " I don't remember " ; and neither of them can
recollect. Now, there is no sort of merit or profit in that sort
of Bible reading; no blessing comes with it. It is of no more
use than galloping through so many columns of advertisements
or so many pages of the dictionary. If the Scriptures are to
profit us, we must ask, as we read, " What does this mean ?
What does it teach ? What lesson may I learn from it ? Does
it suggest prayer ? Does it prompt praise ? Does it prescribe
duty ? " It would be well if all of us might sometimes be pulled

26 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

up in our reading by the question, " Understandest thou that
which thou readest ? " ^

2. The more we study the Word, the more freely the light
breaks upon us. " The opening of thy words giveth light " means
not only that God's Word gives light, but that this light grows
with the growing revelation or understanding of the Word. As
the Word opens before the soul the Divine shines forth from it
more clearly, and the glory of the God it exhibits becomes more
wonderful. The more we understand the Word, the more we see
of God. The deeper we go into the revelation, the nearer we
get to the blaze of the eternal Light.

^ A friend of mine visited Mr. Prang's chromo establishment
in Boston. Mr. Prang showed him a stone on which was laid the
colour for making the first impression toward producing the
portrait of a distinguished public man, but he could see only the
faintest possible line of tinting. The next stone that the paper
was submitted to deepened the colour a little, but still no trace of
the man's face was visible. Again and again was the sheet passed
over successive stones, until at last the outline of a man's face
was dimly discerned. Finally, after some twenty impressions from
as many different stones, the portrait of the distinguished man
stood forth so perfectly that it seemed to lack only the power of
speech to make it living. Thus it is with Christ in the Scriptures.^

^ A Hindoo gentleman, holding a high office in the Presidency
of Bombay, told me a few years ago that during his vacation he
was anxious to read with his son for an hour or two daily a book
of high moral and spiritual influence. He thought of many, and
at last decided to take the Book of Psalms. " We treat it," he
said, " like any other book ; we investigate questions of author-
ship, we try to discover the circumstances in which each psalm
was written, we separate the purely Jewish elements from those
of more general interest and importance, we try to discriminate
between what is human and faulty, and what is lofty and spiritual.
By doing this we seem often to hear the voice of God speaking in
our hearts, showing us the way of truth and duty, and calling us
to higher aspirations and efforts." The man who said this to me
was not a Christian. It shows us what hope there is in present-
ing our Scriptures to non-Christians in the right way, and how
true it is that these Scriptures possess a universal adaptation to
the human spirit.^

1 G. H. James. ' G. Jackson. * A. Macartbui.

PSALM cxix. 130 27

III.

The Light Utilized.

1. " It giveth understanding unto the simple." We all know
what it means to have the intellect enlightened. Everywhere we
are encountering new knowledge. The sciences are all new, the
practical affairs of life are conducted on new methods, with
new instruments and, we may also say, with new purposes.
We live not only on a new continent, but in a veritable
new world. Enlightenment of the understanding seems at times
the single, all-important necessity. All our great system of
schools and colleges and universities is to the one end of pro-
viding this enlightened understanding for the growing generation ;
and we summon the young people to every sacrifice to attain to
the enlightenment which is so much needed. We are charmed
when we come upon any indication of what it holds in store for
them.

^ When Professor Agassiz came to America and made his first
journey westward from the sea-coast, he sat all day in the train
looking out of the window, for everywhere he quickly discovered
what no one else had seen — signs of the action of the great
glaciers of the ice period upon the surface of the continent. Every
rounded hill, every pond in Massachusetts, every undulation in
the levels south of Lake Erie was to him the proof of the theory of
the Ice Age as he had held it. And these indisputable signs of a
great geological epoch had laid openly before the eyes of genera-
tions of men who had been blind to see them. The record of
geological history was written on the very face of the continent,
and up to that hour no one had read it. With what excitement
he turned the leaf of the great story ! With what interest he told
what he saw ! With what open-eyed wonder people responded
to the new teaching ! We want enlightened intelligence in
matters of religion. There are truths as new, as important, and
as interesting in regard to revelation, and in regard to the Bible.
We may well pray that the Church everywhere, and all believers,
may have as a gift of God, enlightenment of their understanding.^

^ India has a venerable civilization, such as it is, and sacred
books which contain a great deal of wisdom and beauty ; but the
Light of Asia has never brought enlightenment to the millions
» H. A. Stimson, The New Things of God, 188.

28 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

who receive it. With all the intellectual glory of ancient Greece,
popular education was a thing unknown. Rome trained her people
to war and plunder for the aggrandizement of the State. Certain
of the slaves were educated to teach their master's sons, but the
plebeian multitude were poor, ignorant, and despised. Let the
intellectual status of the people of Eussia, Italy, Spain, or even
France be compared with that of the people in Germany, England,
or the United States, and how significant are the facts which
appear.^

2. But if we need enlightenment of the intellect, we need
still more the dew of heaven upon the heart. The heart is the
man, and the man must be reached if the work of God is to go
forward. Sadly we discover that the enlightenment of the
intellect goes but a short way in changing the character.
Character rests upon decisions of the will, the abiding purposes
of life, and these are determined primarily by the feelings. It is
therefore the enlightenment of the heart, the stirririg up of the
feelings, the opening of the deep wells of the soul, and the appeal
to the essential nature of the man himself that alone answers the
call of God, and that alone can make men free, in the large sense
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The mere accumulation of know-
ledge is like the stuffing of the stove with fuel — it remains as cold
and dead as the iron itself until the fire is kindled, which alone
can transform it, and set free its imprisoned energies.

This is the unique triumph of God's word that it recreates the
soul, and changes the unrighteous into the image of Christ. No
other power on earth has been able thus to renew the spirit of
man. But this word of God renews its power in every generation.
Into the dark soul its light enters, and in the lowly spirit the fire
of God burns with inextinguishable blaze. In God's light we see
light, and the enkindled soul communes with the glory of God.
In Christ Jesus the fallen one rises to be a new creation, and hears
a holy voice cry, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the
glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."

^ This characteristic has been splendidly manifest in the
propagation of the gospel in foreign lands. The hindrances to the
exercise of this power are enormous among the devotees of false
religions. Custom, tradition, sentiment, imagination, and all the

1 S. 0. Bentop.

PSALM cxix. 130 29

vast conservatism of social forces, are arrayed against the incoming
of the light of the Gospel. The feeble groundwork of truth upon
which the false superstructure is reared has an ancient influence
which counts for much. Yet, wherever the Word of God gets an
opportunity, its results are similar to those which we have our-
selves experienced. In Africa, India, China, and the islands of the
sea, men and women rise to the same childlike assurance of pardon
and peace in Jesus Christ, and confess in the common language of
Christian faith the light-giving and life-giving virtue of the Word
of God. The people that sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and that light is the Son of God.^

^ The other day I was reading a story of a Frenchman who
was being entertained by a Christian chief in one of the Pacific
Islands. The chief had a Bible, which the Frenchman sneered at,
saying that in Europe they had got past that. The chief led his
guest out of the house, showed him where they used to cook and
eat their meals in cannibal days, and clinched everything by
saying, " My friend, if it had not been for that Book, I should have
been dining upon you now." ^

3. Understanding comes only to the simple-hearted : " Unto
the simple." A simple person is often supposed to be a person
who has no understanding or wisdom. But here " simple "
means sincere, honest — a person who has a right aim, a right eye.
What says the Saviour of such? "If thine eye be single" —
rendered sometimes " simple " — if thine eye be simple, " thy whole
body shall be full of light." There is the entrance of God's word.
" But if thine eye be evil," — if it be double, if it be hypocritical, if
it be deceitful, — " thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If,
therefore, the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the
darkness ! " And how gracious it is of God, how merciful, that
He should put the condition of our receiving the inward light, not
upon intellectual and moral capacity. What if He had rested it
on intellect, on philosophy, on science, or rank, or natural power
of intellect : if He had promised it to the man who could muster
different languages, or solve profound and difficult problems ! But,
so far from this, it is just the reverse ; for this is what the Spirit
of God tells us of His work, " Ye see your calling, brethren, how
that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble, are called : but God hath chosen the foolish things of
^ J. Thomas, Concerning the King, 57. " J. R. Walker.

30 THE OPENING OF GOD'S WORD

the world to confound the wise ; and God hath chosen the weak
things of the world to confound the things which are mighty ; and
base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God
chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things
that are : that no flesh should glory in his presence " ; and, it is
added, " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord."

^ A teacher eminent in scientific research in describing the
wondrous beauty and the mysterious structure of a leaf, has said
that any tyro can see the facts for himself if he is provided with
a leaf and a microscope. But how helpless would the tyro be
if he had only the leaf, and not the microscope ! The leaf would
be perfect in all its parts, it would contain rare beauty of form,
colour, and structure, though the tyro was ignorant of it, and had
not a microscope to see it. Without the aid of a microscope, a
scientific teacher even could not see the mysterious substance, the
strange movements, and the beautiful structure of the leaf. The
optical instrument is as necessary for the intelligent as for the
ignorant, for the scientific as for the uneducated. If a man were
to examine the leaf, without the aid of the instrument, and declare
his inability to see any inner beauty, form, and structure in the
leaf, the simple answer would be that these are things which can
only be microscopically discerned. Now this is not merely the
teaching of scientists, it is the teaching of the Apostle. Spiritual
things can be seen and known only by a spiritual mind — a mind
aided and strengthened by the higher power of vision which the
Spirit of God imparts.^

^ There was a literary woman who stood high among book
critics. One day in reviewing a book she said, " Who wrote this
book ? It is beautifully written, but there is something wrong
here and there ! " She proceeded to criticize with a good deal of
severity. Some months afterwards this lady became acquainted
with the author of the book, fell in love, and married him. She
took the same book again aud said, "What a beautiful bookJ
There are some mistakes here and there, but they ought to be
overlooked." The book was just the same as it had been before,
but the critic had changed. When she began to love the author
it changed her attitude toward the book. So it is with us and the
Bible. People do not love the Bible because they do not love
Christ.*

^ W. Simpson. * G. Jackson.

Help from beyond the Hills.

Literature.

Brooks (P.), The Candle of the Lord, 270.

Butler (H. M.), Public School Sermons, 49.

Capen (E. H.), I%e College and the Higher Life, 59.

Cox (S.), The Pilgrim Psalms, 24.

Doney (C. G.), The Throne-Room of the Soul, 173

Hutton (J. A.), At Close QuaHers, 125.

Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 223.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 285.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Psalms li.-cxlv., 335.

McNeill (J.), Regent Square Pulpit, iii. 249.

Morrison (Q. H.), The Return of the Angels, 98.

Moule (H. C. G.), Thy Keeper, 7.

Power (P. B.), Tlie " I wills " of the Psalms, 217.

Pulsford (W.), Trinity Church Sermons, 50.

Scott (J. M.), Some Favourite Psalms, 117.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 42.

Smith (G. A.), Four Psalms, 99.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xiv. (1891), No. 37.

Whincup (D. W.), The Training of Life, 33.

Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 27.

Wright (D.), Waiting for the Light, 238.

Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 154 (R. Tuck).

Homiletic Review, li. 219 (W. H. Walker) ; Ixiv. 139 (W. J. C. Pike).

Treasury (New York), xvii. 668 (D. M. Pratt).

sa

Help from beyond the Hills.

I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains :

From whence shall my help comep

My help cometh from the Lord,

Which made heaven and earth.— Ps. czxi. i, 3.

This psalm is one of that remarkable series of fifteen which
are called, in the ancient headings of our Bibles, " Psalms of
Degrees," or, as the Kevised Version renders the Hebrew, " Songs
of Ascents." In the ancient Greek and Latin versions of the
Scriptures the rendering is, " Songs of Steps," or " of Staircases."
They are psalms connected somehow with steps upward, as to a
shrine ; and one ancient explanation of the heading is that there
were fifteen steps leading up to the "Court of Israel" in the
Temple of Jerusalem, and that the fifteen Songs of Degrees have
connexion with those steps, and were sung on certain ceremonial
occasions on them, or while worshippers went up by them. A
mystic meaning is given to the title by some of the ancient Jewish
expositors. One of them sees in these psalms an allusion to the
spiritual steps " on which God leads the righteous up to a blessed
hereafter " ; and true it is that these psalms, in a sweet way of
their own, lead us to views of His Word, of His promises, and of
Himself, which afiPord an uplifting guide and help to the pilgrim
as he ascends " from strength to strength " towards the heavenly
shrine. Another account of the word is that these were psalms
used, not upon the steps in the Temple, but on the ascending
march of pilgrims returning from exile in Babylon, or going up
at the great festivals to Jerusalem from the remote parts of the
Holy Land. They climbed towards the mountain throne where
the City and the Temple were set, and they solaced their way
with these psalms of peculiar and beautiful faith, hope, and joy,
as most of them conspicuously are.

^ These Psalms of Degrees, the Psalms from the 120th to
134th inclusive, display a certain characteristic rhythm, and they

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 3

34 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

speak a tender pathetic dialect of their own, if one may use the
word ; a certain uplook, almost always, as out of a felt need to
the ever-present Lord, seems to be the deepest inspiration of the
song. This Psalm, assuredly, the 12l8t, is " a Song of Ascents,"
a song of up-goings, a song befitting the heart which believes and
loves, on its way to the eternal Zion. The whole direction of it
is upwards, God-wards. It is, in the language of the Communion
Service, a Sursum corda, a " Lift up your hearts ; we lift them up
unto the Lord." Shall we describe the Psalm in few and simple
words ? It is the soul's look, out from itself, and up to its all-
sufficient God, under a sense of complete need, and with the
prospect of a complete supply.

My need and Thy great fulness meet,
And I have all in Thee.^

^ The speaker, as we take it, was one of the Jews in Babylon.
Under the hand of a tyrant and among heathen, neither day nor
night, in going out or coming in, was he safe. Evening by
evening, therefore, he put himself anew into a keeping that could
not fail. Ever as the time came for the altar smoke to rise on
Mount Zion did he come forth into the open. The great plain,
arched by the great sky, was his temple : and Jehovah, the Lord
of heaven and earth, was there. Nevertheless, his heart yearned
towards the Holy of Holies, God's chosen spot, and he turned his
face to it. As he closed his eyes to pray, he saw the blue
hills of Judah and the towers that crowned the Holy House.
He sent his cry for mercy to the Mercy Seat. His help would
come from beyond the hills, even from the Glory between the
cherubim.2

^ When I lived at Oxford, a good many years ago, one of the
tutors lay dying of a cancerous disease. It was a summer of
perfect warmth and beauty, and every meadow was as a haunt of
dreams. But the dying man was a native of Iceland, and amid
all the glory of those days, the cry on his lips was to get back to
Iceland, just that he might see the snow again. That same
feeling breathes in this verse " I to the hills will lift mine eyes."
The writer was an exile, far from home ; he was in a land where
everything was strange. And what did it matter to him though
Babylonia was fairer than the country of his birth ! The hills of
his homeland were calling him.'

> H. C. G. Moule, Thy Keeper, 8.

• D. Burns, The Song of the Well, 66.

» 0. H. Morrison, The Return of the Angels, 98.

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 35

I
The Call of the Hills.

" I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains."

1. The hills that the Psalmist was thinking about were visible
frem no part of that long-extended plain where he dwelt ; and he
might have looked till he wore his eyes out, ere he could have seen
them on the horizon of sense. But although they were unseen,
they were visible to the heart that longed for them. He directed his
desires farther than the vision of his eyeballs can go. Just as his
possible contemporary, Daniel, when he prayed, opened his window
towards the Jerusalem that was so far away; and just as
Mohammedans still, in every part of the world, when they pray,
turn their faces to the Kaaba at Mecca, the sacred place to
which their prayers are directed ; and just as many Jews still,
north, east, south or west though they be, face Jerusalem when
they offer their supplications — so this Psalmist in Babylon,
wearied and sick of the low levels that stretched endlessly and
monotonously round about him, says, " I will look at the things
that I cannot see, and lift up my eyes above these lownesses about
me, to the loftinesses that sense cannot behold."

^ The eyes that the Psalmist speaks of are the eyes of the
soul, and the hills to which he looks are the hills of help for the
soul. Our souls relate us to the world of the soul, as our senses
relate us to the world of the senses. The soul's faculty of faith
is to our eternal nature what our senses are to our temporal
nature. And as the evidence of the senses puts an end to all
strife about the things presented to them, so faith gives restful
assurance with respect to the objects of belief. Faith is that
faculty of pure reason with which the soul of all the senses is
endowed. The assurance of faith is, therefore, not the assurance
of one but of all our faculties in that ground of our nature which
unites all our powers. The assurance of faith is the assurance of
seeing, of hearing, of tasting, of handling — all in one and at once.
The Psalmist is fully assured as to the hills of help to which he
lifts up his eyes. He only speaks of what he sees with " the eyes
of his heart " ; for it is " with the heart man believes " and looks
at spiritual things.^

> W. Pulsferd.

36 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

^ Euskin, in his Modern Painters, has called attention to a
suggestive fact. It is that the greatest painters of the Holy
Family have always a hint of the mountains in the distance.
You might have looked for cornfield or for vineyard, or for some fine
pleasant garden sleeping in the sunshine; but in the greatest
painters ifiat you never find ; it is " I to the hills will lift mine
eyes." What they felt was, with one of these intuitions which
are the birthright and the seal of genius — what they felt was that
for a secular subject vineyard and meadow might be a fitting
background ; but for the Holy Family, and for the Child of God,
and for the love of heaven incarnate in humanity, you want the
mystery, the height, the depth, which call to the human spirit
from the hills. It is not to man as a being with an intellect
that the hills have spoken their unvarying message. It is to
man as a being with a soul, with a cry in his heart for things
that are above him. That is why Zeus in the old Pagan days
came down to speak to men upon Mount Ida. That is why
Genius painting Jesus Christ throws in its faint suggestion of the
peaks.^

2. The hills were associated with the greatest events in the
history of Israel. The Old Testament is the record of the soul,
and it is written against a background of the hills. It is true
that it does not open in the mountains. It opens in the luxuri-
ance of a garden. Its opening scene is an idyllic picture in the
bosom of an earthly paradise. But when man has fallen, and
sounded the great deeps, and begun to cry for the God whom he
has lost, then are we driven from the garden scenery and brought
amid the grandeur of the hills. It is on Ararat that the ark
rests, when the judgment of the waters has been stayed. It is to
a mountain-top that Abraham is summoned to make his sacrifice
of Isaac. And not on the plain where the Israelites are camped,
but amid the cloudy splendour of Mount Sinai, does God reveal
Himself, and give His law, and enter into covenant with man.
Do we wonder that the exiled Psalmist said, " I will lift up mine
eyes unto the mountains " ? They were dyed deep for him with
sacred memory, and rich with the precious heritage of years. Nor
was it merely a heritage of home ; it was a heritage of God and of
the soul. Among the hills Israel had learned everything that
made her mighty as a spiritual power.

» Q. H. Morrison, Tht Retwm of the Angels, 100,

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 37

^ From Venice, Euskin travelled by Milan and Turin to Susa,
and over the Pass of Mont Cenis. Among the mountains he
recovered at once health and spirits. His first morning among
the hills after the long months in Italy, he accounted a turning-
point in his life :

"I woke from a sound tired sleep in a little one- windowed
room at Lans-le-bourg, at six of the summer morning, June 2nd,
1841 ; the red aiguilles on the north relieved against pure blue —
the great pyramid of snow down the valley in one sheet of eastern
light. I dressed in three minutes, ran down the village street,
across the stream, and climbed the grassy slope on the south side
of the valley, up to the first pines. I had found my life again ; —
all the best of it. What good of religion, love, admiration or
hope, had ever been taught me, or felt by my best nature, rekindled
at once ; and my line of work, both by my own will and the aid
granted to it by fate in the future, determined for me. I went
down thankfully to my father and mother, and told them I was
sure I should get well."

Euskin might have said very literally with the Psalmist : " I
will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help." ^

^ Nature has many aspects, and God is behind them all ; but
the mass and grandeur, the vast solitudes and deep recesses in the
heart of the hills, are, in a peculiar sense, the inner shrine where
He waits for those who come, worn and confused, from the noise
and strife of the world. Here the sounds of man's struggle are
lost in His peace ; here the fever of desire and the agitation of
emotion are calmed in His silence. The great hills, purple with
heather or green with moss, rise peak beyond peak in sublime
procession ; the mountain streams run dark and cool through dim
and hidden channels, singing that song without words which is
sweet with all purity and fresh with the cleanness of the un-
trodden heights. Through the narrow passes one walks with a
silent joy, born of a renewed sense of relationship with the sub-
lime order of the world, and of a fresh communion with the Spirit
of which all visible things are the symbol and garment. This is
perhaps the greatest service which the hills of God render to him
who seeks them with an open mind and heart. Their grandeur
silently dispels one's scepticism in the possible greatness of man's
life. In a world where such heights rise in lonely majesty, the soul,
to which they speak with voices so manifold and so eloquent, feels
anew the divinity which shapes its destiny, and gains a fresh faith
in the things that are unseen and eternal.^

1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Euskin, i. 120.
=" H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 81.

38 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

3. The hills evermore summon us to look up. The influence
of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and
heart downwards. We are in the world ; in a thousand subtle
ways we are kin with the world. We are subject to its influences,
caught by its wind of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims,
and then we may easily be of the world as well as in it. But
everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us, and
it 80 keeps us looking down that at last the habit of down-look-
ing grows upon us. The world offers the attraction of its riches,
but money is all below us, and we must look down upon it. The
world fascinates us with its learning and its science, but books
and experiments are all below us, we must look down upon
them. The world bids the siren pleasure float on golden wing
before us, winning us to her pursuit; but she ever flies low,
and we must look down upon her. Even the better things
that the world may give us, the things of family life and love,
are still all below us ; we look down even on the children about
our feet.

^ I have read of a woman who worked hard with her pen, and
at last found her eyes troubling her. The oculist whom she con-
sulted told her that her eyes needed rest and change. From the
windows of her home there was a grand view of some distant
hills, and the doctor told her, when her eyes were tired with
work, to look out of the window and gaze on the distant hills. It
is good for us all to look out of the window sometimes. If
we are always looking at the rooms where we live, the shop where
we trade, the farm or the counting-house, we begin to think there
is nothing else. Our little bit of ground is all this world and the
next ; we never see anything beyond our own handiwork, we are
blind to all else, like the horse in the coal-mine.^

^ Sailors tell us that at sea, when the fog is so dense that
they cannot see far ahead, they climb the rigging ; and, seated
there upon the yard-arm, they may see the heavens bathed in
sunshine and the blue sky above the billows of mist that lie
below.

God hath His uplands, bleak and bare,

Where He doth bid us rest awhile —
Crags where we breathe the purer air,

Lone peaks that catch the day's first smile.
» H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Day by Day DxUy, 27.

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 39

Lift me, 0 Lord, above the level plain.

Beyond the cities where life throbs and thrills,

And in the cool airs let my spirit gain

The stable strength and courage of Thy hills.

They are Thy secret dwelling places. Lord.

Like Thy majestic prophets, old and hoar,
They stand assembled in divine accord,

Thy sign of stablished power for evermore.

Lead me yet farther, Lord, to peaks more clear,
Until the clouds like shining meadows lie,

Where through the deeps of silence I may hear
The thunder of Thy legions marching by.

IL

The Cry of Helplessness.

"From whence shall my help come?"

1. The exile in Babylon had a dreary desert, peopled by wild
tribes hostile to him, stretching between his present home and
that home where he desired to be ; and it would be difficult for
him to get away from the dominion that held him captive, unless
by consent of the power of whom he was the vassal. So the
more the thought of the mountains of Israel drew the Psalmist,
the more there came into his mind the thought. How am I to be
made able to reach that blessed soil ? And surely, if we saw,
with anything like a worthy apprehension and vision, the great-
ness of the blessedness that lies yonder for Christian souls, we
should feel far more deeply than we do the impossibility, as far as
we are concerned, of our ever reaching it. The sense of our own
weakness and the consciousness of the perils upon the path ought
ever to be present with us all.

^ Man knows that he is low, that he needs to be lifted up,
that he cannot lift himself — he can but lift up his eyes. He
knows that his lowness is not lowly, but degraded and proud.
By his natural birth he has come into low places, and in himself
he has forsaken the heights. What he is by nature he has con-
firmed by choice, and allowed the conditions of his natural birth
to form his character and determine his life. He has inverted

40 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

the true order of his parts and powers, degraded his nobler
faculties, and raised to a bad eminence his lower passions and
propensities.^

2. All the delights of Babylon could not satisfy the exile's
longing. He was perfectly comfortable in Babylon. There was
abundance of everything that he wanted for his life. The Jews
there were materially quite as well off as, and many of them a great
deal better off than, ever they had been in their narrow little
strip of mountain land, shut in between the desert and the sea.
But for all that, fat, wealthy Babylon was not Palestine. So
amid the luxuriant vegetation, the wealth of water and the fertile
plains, the Psalmist longed for the mountains, though the
mountains are often bare of green things. It was that longing
that led to his looking to the hills. Do we know anything of
that longing which makes us "that are in this tabernacle to
groan, being burdened " ? Unless our Christianity throws us out
of harmony and contentment with the present, it is worth very
little. And unless we know something of that immortal longing
to be nearer to God, and fuller of Christ, and emancipated from
sense and from the burdens and trivialities of life, we have yet
to learn what the meaning of walking "not after the flesh but
after the Spirit " really is.

^ Writing from Aberdeen to Lady Boyd, Samuel Rutherford
says : " I have not now, of a long time, found such high spring-
tides as formerly. The sea is out, and I cannot buy a wind and
cause it to flow again; only I wait on the shore till the Lord
sends a full sea. . . . But even to dream of Him is sweet." And
then just over the leaf, to Marion McNaught : "I am well :
honour to God. . . . He hath broken in upon a poor prisoner's
soul like the swelling of Jordan. I am bank and brim full: a
great high springtide of the consolations of Christ hath over-
whelmed me." But sweet as it is to read his rapturous expres-
sions when the tide is full, I feel it far more helpful to hear how
he still looks and waits for the return of the tide when the tide is
low, and when the shore is full, as all left shores are apt to be, of
weeds and mire, and all corrupt and unclean things. Rutherford
is never more helpful to his correspondents than when they con-
sult him about their ebb tides, and find that he himself either has
been, or still is, in the same experience.'

* W. Pulsford. ' A. Whyte, Samuel Rutherford and Some of his Corrcspondent$.

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 41

3. Even the hills could not send help. Verse 2 declares
that, although the hills stand for earth's best defence, the singer's
hope is in the Creator, not in things created, in Him who set fast
the mountains, and is higher than they as heavens are higher
than earth. The insufiBciency of the hills is again implied in the
two striking pictures of the third and fourth verses. Smooth
rock or sliding sand, loose rubble or sUppery turf, landslide
beneath or avalanche from above, may betray the climber to
injury or destruction. But Jehovah delivers His people from
falling, and establishes their goings. Again, the recumbent hills
lie ever wrapt in proverbial and unbroken sleep. They heed not,
they hear not, and they suffer the night to change the clifif from
a defence to a danger, and the slumbering slopes sound no alarm
as the enemy scales them under cover of the night. But God is
ever wakeful for His own — and darkness and the light are both
alike to Him. The contrast is continued in verse 5. The hills
are passive, God is active ; He guards, He is fortress, garrison, and
patrol. The strongest hill-forts must be well defended, or Petra
will fall to Eome, the Heights of Abraham to Wolfe, Hannibal
will pass the Alps, and Xerxes outflank Leonidas by Thermopylae.
The soldier must guard the hill that guards him, but God guards
all.

^ We must avoid the mistakes frequently made by poets who
have sought to personify nature and find in it a response to the
varying moods of human life, and by theologians who have found
in it an analogy of the ways of God, Nature is not like God.
Her laws disclose no moral standards. When these are intro-
duced she appears full not only of contradictions but of cruelties,
and the God whose character we could induce from a consideration
of the laws of nature would be as immoral as the pagan divinities.
We need something nearer, more human and considerate, a God
who can understand and suffer and love. Indeed we are so far
from the poets who seek in nature an echo of their own inner life
as to feel that it is in offering us an escape from ourselves that
nature is most helpful to man. There she lies inscrutable, placid,
expansive ; now wrapped in mists and clouds, now sun-smitten or
attacked by the furious onset of the thunderstorm. The craving
for sympathy from her is morbid; we must find health in her
unresponsiveness, her healing want of sympathy with morbid
souls.*

* J. Eelman, Ephemera Etemitatis, 224.

42 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

^ Tennyson's outlook on the universe could not ignore the
dark and dismaying facts of existence, and his faith, which rose
above the shriek of Nature, was not based upon arguments
derived from any survey of external, physical Nature. When he
confined his outlook to this, he could see power and mechanism,
but he could not from these derive faith. His vision must go
beyond the mere physical universe ; he must see life and see it
whole; he must include that which is highest in Nature, even
man, and only then could he find the resting-place of faith. He
thus summed up the matter once when we had been walking up
and down the " Ball-room " at Farringford : " It is hard," he said,
"it is hard to believe in God; but it is harder not to believe.
I believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, but from what
I find in man." I took him to mean that the witness of Nature
was only complete when it included all that was in Nature, and
that the effort to draw conclusions from Nature when man, the
highest-known factor in Nature, was excluded, could only lead to
mistake. I do not think he meant, however, that external Nature
gave no hints of a superintending wisdom or even' love, for his
own writings show, I think, that such hints had been whispered
to him by flower and star ; I think he meant that faith did not
find her platform finally secure beneath her feet till she had
taken count of man. The response to all that is highest in
Nature is found in the heart of man, and man cannot deny this
highest, because it is latent in himself already. But I must
continue Tennyson's own words : " It is hard to believe in God,
but it is harder not to believe in Him. I don't believe in His
goodness from what I see in Nature. In Nature I see the
mechanician ; I believe in His goodness from what I find in my
own breast." *

III.

The Faith of a True Israelite.

"My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth."

Here is the mark rather of a Babylonian than of a home-
abiding Jew. This way of describing God — " which made heaven
and earth " — is not usual by any means in the Psalms or elsewhere
in the Scriptures. It occurs three times in these Pilgrim Songs,
and only once in all the Psalms besides, and that Psalm (the
115th) seems to have been written after the Captivity. This
* Bishop Boyd Carpenter, in Tennyson and His Friends, 303.

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 43

large thought of God did not come naturally to the mind of an
Israelite, The truth indeed he did accept. It was an item of his
creed that the Lord of his worship did make heaven and earth, all
visible and invisible things : but it was not his spontaneous
thought about God. " Thou that walkest in the camp of Israel"
" Thou that sittest between the cheruhims, shine forth." There was
the localizing of God in the heart of a Jew : one holy place for
the tabernacles of the Most High. "Walk about Zion, and go
round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well her
bulwarks, consider her palaces ; that ye may tell it to the genera-
tion following. For this God is our God for ever and ever." The
King, yes the King of all the earth, but especially our God. But
the exiled Jew has the one advantage at least, that he escaped
this narrowness of thought. The Jew born in Babylon (and
almost all of those who returned from the Captivity were born in
Babylon; the ancient men who had seen the first Temple, and
wept because of the poverty of the second Temple, were very few
indeed) — the Jew born in Babylon could hardly fail to take broad
views of life. There was a tendency in all surrounding things to
uncramp the thoughts. He lived in the midst of vastness. The
mighty town itself more than fifty miles in circuit ; the palace of
the kings within it more than twice as large as the whole city of
Jerusalem: and then those boundless plains spread forth under
the great heavens, and losing themselves on all sides in the
distant horizon — they that lived in the midst of these scenes took
an impress from them. The sign of it appears in these children
of the Captivity, whose eyes were lifted towards the hills of
the sacred land, and who, looking forth over the months of its
weariness and hazards, asked, one on behalf of all, " From whence
Cometh my help ? " and answered, one on behalf of all, " My
help Cometh from the Lord." Not the God of Jacob or of Israel,
or of Him that sitteth between the cheruhims; the teaching
of Babylon has erased those barriers and exalted God above
the universe. "My help cometh from the Lord, which made
heaven and earth."

1. Help from God is sure to come when our spirits hold
fellowship with Him. To do this often, and on occasion to linger
long, cannot but have a great influence on our spirit. We become

44 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

more and more of a heavenly mind, and look to heaven as our own
place and as the goal of all our hopes. We live here with a view
to our life there. We choose our intimates from those who shall
still be our fellows there. We seek such gains as we can lay up
there against the time of our coming. We disengage ourselves
from all that we shall have to leave, and we refuse to make a
home where our spirit never can feel at home. We keep our-
selves free to arise at any moment and, by help from beyond the
hills, to pass beyond, and not return.

^ Did you ever read that fascinating chapter in Washington
Irving's Life of Columbus where he describes the bursting of the
New World upon the little crew which set out with Columbus on
that memorable voyage ? It is one of the most thrilling and most
pathetic bits of recorded history. Columbus from a boy had
dreamt of this discovery. Kings, statesmen, and philosophers
had all been against him. But on he fought undaunted ; and at
last the reward was here.

Chances have laws as fixed as planets have,
And disappointment's dry and bitter root,
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind.
And break a pathway to those unknown realms
That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled;
Endurance is the crowning quality.
And patience all the passion of great hearts;
One faith against a whole earth's unbelief,
One soul against the flesh of all mankind.^

2. When God sends help, the spirit finds rests. He who
penned this psalm, being a slave and a foreigner, had much to
bear and to fear, and he lived under constant strain. For him,
moreover, there was no break in the routine, and only a faint
hope of one day being set free to find his way home. His spirit,
however, was beyond the hand of the conqueror, and need sufiFer
no exile. It was lord of itself, and could choose its own place
and take rest at due times. It had wings swifter than the
dove's, and could fly beyond the hills and alight within the hush
of the Holy Shrine. Tliere, with all about him so different from
the accustomed scene, he found a peace such as common words

' D. W. Whincup, The Training of Life, 89.

PSALM cxxi. I, 2 45

could not express. To tell it, he had to sing it, and in this world
of unquiet hearts his song has been so prized that now no other is
more widely known.

One and all, we are bent on winning this same rest of spirit.
All our quest is, indeed, but this one endeavour. We strive after
success, or pleasure, or influence ; but, behind it all, there is our
inborn longing for the one true home and the one true life. Such
rest can come to us — sinners, and exiles because of our sin —
only as we look, with this man, beyond the hills to the blood-
besprinkled Mercy Seat. There, where we see the Divine pardon,
we see a Help that is alert by day and night, and that is active
against all that would do us ill.

•II The Archduke Palatine died in 1847, a humble and believing
penitent at the foot of the Cross. He had for many years been a
regular reader of the Bible, but it was only when the shadows of
the coming darkness gathered round him that full spiritual light
arose in his soul. Several months before his death he was seized
with a violent illness, which threatened to carry him oJBF. From
this he partially recovered. A cloud passed over him for a time,
but it was dissolved, and he became unusually cheerful. He
acknowledged afterwards that in the days of gloom he had been
reviewing his past life, and had everywhere discovered sin, and
that now he put his whole trust in the merits and righteousness
of Christ. Soon afterwards his last illness began. A few hours
before his death his wife said to him, " As you are now so soon to
stand before the judgment-seat of God, I wish to hear from you
for the last time what is the ground on which you rest your
hope." His immediate reply was, "The blood of Christ alone,"
with a strong emphasis on the alone}

3. The help of the Lord means moral health and vigour. To
this poet, life in Babylon was a ceaseless jeopardy of spirit. As
he passed from day to day he seemed to himself as one hastening
on foot across the desert. The sun blazed on him from a cloud-
less sky, and spears of fire struck into his heart and drank his
strength. When the longed-for night came, the moon brought a
dew that chilled him to the marrow, while she sought to pierce
eye and brain with her arrows of steel. Nevertheless he journeyed
unfainting and unfevered ! One, unseen, walked at his right hand
to do what his right hand, with all its strength and skill, could
G. Carlyle, A Memoir of Adolph Saphir, 44,

46 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS

not accomplish. Not in vain had he made frequent flight of
spirit beyond the hills, and kept alive his fellowship with the
Lord of Zion. What though he could not stay day and night in
the sanctuary ? He who made it safe would come forth with him
and be ever by him. The earthly figure was not fit to picture
all the fact. The heavenly Guard, as Spirit Infinite, is in the
threatened spirit. He fills and clears and lifts the life, so that
the evil influences have no effect for evil. The godly man can
live in Babylon, and be as safe from sin as if he were in Jerusalem,
a priest at the altar and never outside the sacred walls.

^ When Dr. Wilberforce was enthroned as Bishop of Chichester,
nis first sermon in his new Cathedral had as its text the opening
verse of his favourite Psalm — the 121st. The sermon concluded
with these words : " If I inquire from those who have preceded
me the secret of their power, as, called unto their rest, they now
throng up the steeps of light, each, with faithful finger, points to
the motto of his life, * I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence
cometh my help.' To the hills where the first faint rays of the
coming dawn are seen; where echoes haunt and linger, caught
from higher heights beyond, where air is pure and free and
strong; to the hills lifted above the swamps and the miasma,
above the low-lying lands of doubt and uncertainty, above the
babble and the questioning, above ' the world's loud stunning tide,'
up where they rear themselves towards the gathering of the
solemn stars, where the night winds whisper, and the beat of
angel wings is heard, where man can commune with his God,
whence cometh help. To the hills, where the showers gather big
with blessing, and fall drop by drop till the rills begin to sparkle
and leap, and the tiny rivulets are swelling into the broadening
river, refreshing hamlet and homestead, falling down into the
plain and cleansing every city, sweeping onward with its gather-
ing burden to the mighty sea, the broad fertilizing stream of the
lifeof the Church of God." 1

When sick of life and all the world —
How sick of all desire but Thee ! —
I lift mine eyes up to the hills,

Eyes of my heart that see,
I see beyond all death and ills
Eefreshing green for heart and eyes,
The golden streets and gateways pearled.

The trees of Paradise.^

» J. B. Atlay, Bishop Ernest WUberforu, 226. » Christina G. Rossetti.

Guardianship in Daily Life.

Literature.

Ainsworth (P. C), The Threshold Grace, 11.

Cox (S.), The Pilgrim Psalms, 44.

Gumming (J. E.), The Blessed Life, 94

McNeill (J.), Regent Squa/re Pulpit, ii. 249.

Melvill (H.), Sermons, 1854, No. 2241.

Moule (H. C. Q.), Thy Keeper, 63.

Piggott (W. C), The Imperishable Wwd, 120.

Pulsford (W.), Trinity Church Sermons, 50.

Scott (J. M.), Some Favourite Psalms, 126.

Smith (G. A.), Four Psalms, 127.

Wilson (J. M.), Sermons Preached in Clifton College Chapel, ii 147.

Christian World Pulpit, Ixxxiii. 107 (Q. E. Darlaston).

Presbyterian, Jan. 23, 1913 (J. R. M'Lean).

Guardianship in Daily Life.

The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming In,
From this time forth and for evermore. — Ps. cxxi. 8.

1. We often make a mistake in endeavouring to associate these
Old Testament hymns with great occasions in the history of God's
chosen race, with the important events and crises through which
they were called to pass, forgetting, as we do, that Israel, and
God's servants of every age and place, need Him most of all, and
need the uplift of every possible grace most of all, in the
continuous processes of life's development and the humdrum
experiences of an everyday world. It needs no great stretch
of the imagination to believe that some Robert Burns of his
generation wrote down these lines as the expression of his simple
belief in the all-providing care of Jehovah and His sleepless
watchfulness.

2. The very essence of the psalm is simplicity ; here you find
no high flights of poetic imagination, no startling metaphors or
fresh truth. And yet there is a warm glow in its message, and
there is a fragrance in its simple trust, which have made it one of
the best loved of all the psalms, to both Jews and Christians
throughout the world. It is the song of a man who found life
transfigured by a thought, a thought born out of his own experi-
ence— that the God of the everlasting hills was no mere spectator
of human struggles, no indolent Deity calming himself to sleep
amid the perturbations of a universe and the unheeded cries of
his creatures. It is the song of a man who had seen God's rain-
bow on the dark background of the day's routine, and was assured
that all is well. It is the song of a man whose ambitions were of
a lowly character, and who was content to go out and in, to meet
life's appointments, if so be that the Lord Himself would be his
keeper. And what a power lies secreted in the heart of a song
when a man can sing it with the emphasis of experience !

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 4

50 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

L

Going Out and Coming In.

1. These words practically mean the activities, the intercourse,
the incidents of life. Again and again we meet with this phrase
in the Old Testament Scriptures. Take for instance 2 Sam. iiL 25
There Joab warns David that Abner has come with the pretence
of friendship, but really to take note of his circumstances and the
weak points at which to attack his throne. " He came," said
Joab, " to know thy going out and thy coming in, and to know all
that thou doest." Again, see Isaiah xxxvii. 28 ; there the Lord
through His prophet is speaking of the terrible Sennacherib, the
assailant of Jerusalem. " I know thy abode," so run the words,
" and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me."
Here in both passages, the meaning clearly is the whole course
and conduct of life, all its active incidents, all things in which
man goes out amongst others and comes home to himself again,
alternating company and privacy, engaging in the varied under-
takings of an active existence. It is in fact life, not spent in the
monotony of a cloister, or of a wilderness, but thronging with the
realities of the common day and hour.

2. Home is the centre of the picture ; the day begins and ends
here. Its journey does not take its bearings from the points of
the compass. It is not eastward or westward, but homeward or
away from home. So simple are the directions of the daily
pilgrimage, going out and coming in, that some of us perhaps
hardly value the fair promise that God shall protect them both.
We, whose lives move through a limited field, easily form the
habit of prosaic outlooks, regarding our existence as a common-
place and dull matter. We go out without wonder, and return
without surprise. We lose that fine fancy of childhood which
made a walk into the next street an expedition and brought us
back from the woodlands as travellers from a far country. That
we can now step from the door with no thrill in the morning, and
that our hearts do not throb as our hands feel for the latch at
eventide, speaks an imagination of crippled power.

PSALM cxxi. 8 51

^ One of the great dividing-lines in human life is the threshold-
line. On one side of this line a man has his " world within the
world," the sanctuary of life, the sheltered place of peace, the
scene of Hfe's most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations.
And on the other side lies the larger life of mankind, wherein also
a man must take his place and do his work. Life is spent in
crossing this threshold-line, going out to the many and coming in
to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in
to take the right to rest. And over us all every hour there
watches the Almighty Love. The division-lines in the life of man
have nothing that corresponds to them in the love of God. We
may be here or there, but He is everywhere.^

3. The threshold of the home does not draw the truest division-
line in life between the outward and the inward. Life is made
up of thought and action, of the manifest things and the hidden
things. " Thy going out." That is our life as it is manifest to
others, as it has points of contact with the world about us. We
must go out. We must take up some attitude towards all other
life. We must add our word to the long human story and our
touch to the fashioning of the world. We need the pledge of
Divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill,
others must have a place and a part. " And thy coming in " —
into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did we say uninvaded ?
Not so. In that inner room of life there sits Eegret with her
pale face, and Shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory
with tears in her eyes. Our coming in is a pitiable thing at times.
More than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity
because he could not abide the coming in. " The Lord shall keep
. . . thy coming in." That means help for every lonely, impotent,
inward hour of life.

^ It is as we convince and persuade ourselves that God is our
Keeper who is also the Maker of heaven and earth, that we are
delivered from our bondage to care and fear. We could do no
wiselier, then, if we are still seeking the rest of faith, than to
translate the phrases of this ancient Psalm into the terms of our
modern experience, and to adopt them as a meditation and a
prayer : —

" I am beset with cares, night and day — cares for myself and
cares for my friends, cares for health physical and mental, cares

1 P. C. Ainsworth, The Threshold Grace, 11.

52 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

of business and cares of home, cares about life and cares about
death, cares for both body and soul. Where shall I look for help ?
None can really help me but God. He vnll help me. And He
is the Maker of all things. What can I want, then, that He
cannot give ? What need I fear when He is my Shield ? He is
not a man, as I am, soon fatigued, soon exhausted. He has worked
hitherto, and will work. The whole course of the human story
has been ordained and conducted by Him ; and, in every age and
every nation, those who have sincerely trusted in Him have been
content and at peace. Why should I distrust Him, then ? I will
not distrust Him. He will keep me in the perils of the day, and
in the perils of the night. No form of evil can evade His eye or
resist His will. Why should He not keep me from all evil, if He
cares for me, as He does, and for all men ? When I go down to
business He will keep me. He will watch over, not my body
alone, or my health, or my life: He will also keep my soul,
strengthening it by adversity and by the changes of time. No
change, no lapse of time, neither death, nor even life, can separate
me from Him, my chief Good, and the Source of all other good.
I will trust in Him. I will rest in Him. I have done with care,
and fear, and the frets of life, and the dread of death ; for I have
taken sanctuary in Him, who will be the health of my soul from
this time forth and for evermore."

If we were thus to dwell and linger on the thought of God
and His care for us, to insist on it to ourselves, to repeat and vary
our expression of it, to hark back to it again and again ; if we
could but rise and settle into the conviction of a tender fatherly
Providence that covers our whole life, and extends through all
time ; we too might feel the swell and sacred glow of the Hebrew
pilgrims who sang the praise of Jehovah, their Keeper and ours.^

II.

The Peril of the Common Eound.

It was much for the folk of an early time to say that as they
went forth the Lord went with them, but it is more for men to
say and know that same thing to-day. The " going out " has come
to mean more age after age, generation after generation. It was
a simpler thing once than it is now. "Thy going out" — the
shepherd to his flocks, the farmer to his field, the merchant to
^ S. Cox, The Pilgrim Psalms, 44.

PSALM cxxi. 8 53

his merchandise. There are still flocks and fields and markets, but
where are the leisure, the grace, and the simplicity of life for him
who has any share in the world's work ? Men go out to-day to
face a life shadowed by vast industrial, commercial, and social
problems. Life has grown complicated, involved, hard to under-
stand, difficult to deal with. Tension, conflict, subtlety, surprise,
and amid it all, or over it all, a vast brooding weariness that ever
and again turns the heart sick.

1. There is peril ingoing out. — What does this going out involve ?
Surely it means a great exchange — an exchange of peace for war-
fare, passing from privacy into publicity, leaving those who know
us so intimately and love us so well, and going amongst the many,
perhaps unknowing and unloving. On the one side of the line
we share with others, on the other side we are claiming for our-
selves. Here we find our greatest joy in giving ; there, usually,
our greatest joy is in getting. Here we love and work for one
another ; there the common aim is to work for ourselves. Within
the doorway, on this side of the threshold, life is common, but
there, outside, it is individualistic to a degree. Competition rages,
fierce and unabating, every day changing its detail, its methods,
and its scope. There are slow, grinding changes in the common
life which crush the sluggard to the wall, and there are quick
sudden surprises which overwhelm even the wary.

There are elements of danger in modern life that threaten all
the world's toilers, whatever their work may be and wherever
they may have to do it. There is the danger that always lurks
in things — a warped judgment, a confused reckoning, a narrowed
outlook. It is so easily possible for a man to be at close grips
with the world, and yet to be ever more and more out of touch
with its realities. The danger in the places where men toil is not
that God is denied with a vociferous atheism ; it is that He is
ignored by an unvoiced indifference. It is not the babel of the
market-place that men need to fear ; it is its silence. If we say
that we live only as we love, that we are strong only as we are
pure, that we are successful only as we become just and good, the
world into which we go forth does not deny these things, but it
ignores them. And thus the real battle of life is not the toil for
bread. It is fought by all who would keep alive and fresh in their

54 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

hearts the truth that man doth not live by bread alone. For no
man is this going out easy ; for some it is at times terrible, for
all it means a need that only this promise avails to meet — " The
Lord shall keep thy going out." He shall fence thee about with
the ministry of His Spirit, and give thee grace to know, every-
where and always, that thou art in this world to live for His
kingdom of love and truth and to grow a soul.

^ Put before your mind a man who is fully exposed to real
life ; imagine him with all the complications of his character : his
defects of will, his disadvantage of temperament, his imperfect
balance of thought and feeling. What is to happen to him in his
going out and coming in ? Look at him going out from church
for instance. Even on the Sunday night he cannot leave these
doors but more or less he finds himself in miscellaneous circum-
stances at once. And he will soon be waking up to Monday
morning, and all the calls and all the undertakings of the week.
He will not spend the week — we shall not spend it — under a
sanctuary roof ; he will have to engage in the business of the hour,
to attend, like most of us, to things which in themselves are
of the earth, earthy. He will have to do, as we shall, possibly
in close personal intercourse, time after time, with those who
know not our hope and love not our Lord, and are thinking
of anything in the world but of helping us on for heaven. Look
at this man in his " going out " — out to all the countless circum-
stances that make up life for him ; and he cannot keep himself !
Look at him in his " coming in." He comes into the home circle ;
and home is too often the place where man is most off his guard.
Or perhaps he is away from home life, living by himself ; he comes
into the privacy of his study, to his college rooms, to his lodgings
in the town. However, he " comes in " ; and the enemy will be
waiting for that man ; some snare, be sure, will be set for his feet,
within or without, in the regions of thought, of imagination, of
habit, all alone. Ah, what shall he do ? How shall he face the
perpetual effort, to watch always, to meet and to conquer every-
thing in the going out and the coming in ? ^

2. There is peril in coming in. — It might seem to some that
once a man was safely across the threshold of his home he might
stand in less need of this promise of help. But experience says
otherwise. Tlie world has little respect for any man's threshold.
It is capable of many a bold and shameless intrusion. The things
1 H. C. G. Moule, Thy Keeper, 73.

PSALM cxxi. 8 55

that harass a man as he earns his bread sometimes haunt him as
he eats it. No home is safe unless faith be the doorkeeper. " In
peace will I both lay me down and sleep : for thou, Lord, alone
makest me dwell in safety." The singer of that song knew that,
as in the moil of the world, so also in the shelter of the place he
named his dwelling-place, peace and safety were not of his making,
but of God's giving.

The returns of life are hardly less adventurous and fraught with
surprise than its outgoings. There are apprehensions that wake
as we move into the areas of our familiar places again. What may
have chanced in the hours of absence? What shock of joy or
sorrow may have broken on the home ? To what revelation for
which our hearts are unprepared are we drawing near ? There
are moods in which the least sensitive of us has known these
questionings. When sickness or anxiety is in the house, our
feelings are intensified to a pitch at which we scarcely know
whether to hasten or to linger. Or, when our nerves have been
strained and jangled in the business hours, they may be quickened
to an ominous foreboding.

And, indeed, it is always true that as changes have been
worked for us who have been out in the busy world, so for those
we left at home there have been also sequences of change. As we
do not return the same men we went out in the morning, we do
not find quite the same presences awaiting us. The home has
had its own temptations and battle-grounds as well as the shop ;
the wife and children have passed through their spiritual dis-
ciplines as well as ourselves. For some hours we have been out
of contact ; our developments may have been different. The ways
along which we have journeyed may not have been the same, not
even parallel, nor in the same direction. Our lessons may not
have been similar, and our moods and thoughts may have moved
on divergent planes.

We may be coming with buoyant steps from a day's work,
where all has gone fairly and smoothly, to a house where number-
less small irritations have ruffled the temper and played upon the
heart. Or we may return weary and disheartened to a hearth
where the day has passed in peaceful routine. We are in a sense
strangers to one another. We have to adjust ourselves and to
seek a new point of contact, and it may be very easily missed.

56 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

We may strike in sudden discord upon one another, our unattuned
moods may jar and clash. A husband's buoyancy may enter
unsympathetically upon a mood of his wife who is worried and
overstrained, or the man's ruffled temper may turn the placid
welcome of the woman to bitterness, and so the peace that ought
ever to be found on the threshold of home is not found there.

^ A Christian woman in a burst of querulous questioning said,
"Ah, if these good men had like me the charge of six little
children, and only a careless girl to help them, they would know
better whether it is possible to be always at peace." Yes ! " The
Lord shall keep thy coming in." Home — nursery — kitchen, are
His as much as the closet. His keeping is needed in them all, and
is equally possible there.^

III.

The Keeper of Our Way.

1. The recurring and characteristic word of the psalm is
" keep " ; it is repeated no fewer than six times in the last six
verses. The Creator of the universe is the Keeper of Israel. The
Keeper of the whole nation is the Keeper of the individual man.
The Keeper of the man and the nation does not fall into slumber
from weariness; nor is his life, through mortal weakness, an
alternate waking and sleeping ; He guards them from the perils
of the night as well as from the perils of the day. He keeps those
who trust in Him from evil of every form. He keeps their very
soul, their most inward and secret life. He keeps them in all the
changes and intercourses of their outward life, their goings out
and their comings in. He keeps them through all lapse of time,
now and for evermore.

We need more than ever to convince our own hearts and to
lay emphasis upon the truth of the constant supervision of our
Father in Heaven over the minutest details of our lives, for, as
Carlyle put it, " The Almighty God is not like a clockmaker that
once in old, immeasurable ages, having made his horologe of a
universe, sits ever since and sees it go." Such a travesty of
Providence leads to a gloomy fatalism, a fatalism that robs the
heart of joy and of the safe-guarding realization of God's near and

> J. E. Gumming, The Blessed Life, 100.

PSALM cxxi. 8 57

ever-defending Presence. And there is nothing that can counter-
act this movement towards spiritual pessimism, but "practising
the presence of God."

In the little introductory poem to the Autobiography of Mark
Rutherford, there is a line that expresses the feelings of a multi-
tude of men and women : " I was ever commonplace." That was
certainly never true of Eutherford, and it is never true of any
man. And that feeling robs life of all its beauty and its strength.
If we believe that we are commonplace, our work commonplace,
and our destiny commonplace, then we will do our best not to
belie our character. Therefore, our hopes are blasted, and our
work becomes in very deed a cruel drudgery. Could we but con-
vince ourselves that the Lord Himself is our Keeper ; could we
but assure ourselves that we are linked to the eternal purpose of
the Almighty, that nothing is commonplace in the outgoings and
the incomings of our lives, then we should dream dreams and see
visions. We should stand on our feet as the sons of God. We
should be filled with the glowing hope of a new enthusiasm.
Every duty would be an anvil on which we would forge another
link for the chain of character, and every temptation another
opportunity of adding something to our credit and the honour of
our Lord. Even the very darkness of sorrow and pain would but
bring out the stars of God's mercies.

^ You have heard of the man who, when he was dying, asked
that they should inscribe upon his tombstone just one word, and
that one word was not his name, his good deeds, or anything
about him ; but over the anonymous corpse that lay beneath was
to be the word "Kept." It was a stroke of genius. "Kept."
That will do. If I live until I am ninety, and do well all that
time, when I come to die, put me down in my grave, and only
put that over the top of me, and I will be full content — " Kept." ^

2. God stands at the door morning and evening, like a sentinel,
to keep us under friendly observation. The Hebrews attached a
good deal of religious significance to the doorway. Even now the
pious Jew hangs on his doorpost the mezuzah, a small metal
cylinder, which contains a piece of parchment on which is inscribed
the famous command in Deuteronomy : " Hear, 0 Israel : the
liOrd our God is one Lord : and thou shalt love the Lord thy God

* J. McNeill, Regent Square Pulpit, iii. 249.

58 GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in
thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy
children . . . and thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy
house, and on thy gates." That command is still fulfilled. The
Jew fixes the little case, with the parchment inside, on the upper
part of the right-hand post of his door, and every time he goes in
or comes out he touches it and he recites the words of this text.

^ It is said that the great conqueror, Alexander, was able, like
Napoleon, to sleep amid the noise and tumult of battle. On a
friend expressing surprise at the achievement, he replied, Parmenio
watches ! But the Maker of Parmenio, the faithful sentinel, is
our keeper ! How safe we are when we lie in the Bosom of God !
How safe when we walk with our hand in God's ! Walking
or resting, waking or sleeping, we are safe, if the Lord is our
Shepherd.^

3. The true Guardian is also the Good Shepherd. There are
few of the psalms which the early Christians referred more
frequently to Christ. On the lintel of an ancient house in the
Hauran may be read the inscription : •* 0 Jesus Christ, be the
shelter and defence of the home and of the whole family, and bless
their incoming and outgoing." How may we also sing this psalm
of Christ ? By remembering the new pledges He has given us
that God's thoughts and God's heart are with us. By remember-
ing the infinite degree which the cross has revealed, not only of
the interest God takes in our life, but of the responsibility He
Himself assumes for its eternal issues. The cross was no new
thing. The cross was the putting of the love of God, of the
blood of Christ, into the old fundamental pieties of the human
heart, the realizing by Jesus in Himself of the dearest truths
about God. Look up, then, and sing this psalm of Him. Can we
lift our eyes to any of the hills without seeing His figure upon
them ? Is there a human ideal, duty or hope with which Jesus is
not inseparably and for ever identified ? Is there a human experi-
ence— the struggle of the individual heart in temptation, the pity
of the multitude, the warfare against the strongholds of wicked-
ness— from which we can imagine Him absent? No; it is
impossible for any high outline of morality or religion to break
' J. M. Scott, Some Favourite Psalms, 124.

PSALM cxxi. 8 59

upon the eyes of our race ; it is impossible for any field of
righteous battle, any flood of suffering to unroll, without the
vision of Christ upon it. He dominates our highest aspirations,
and is felt by our side in our deepest sorrows. There is no loneli-
ness, whether of height or of depth, which He does not enter by
the side of His own.

Who has assumed responsibility for our life as Christ has ?
Who has taken upon himself the safety and the honour, not of
the little tribe for whom this psalm was first sung, but of the
whole of the children of men? He took upon Himself our
weariness. He lifted our sorrow, He disposed of our sin — as only
God can call or lift or dispose. Nothing exhausted His pity, or
His confidence to deal with us ; nothing ever betrayed a fault in
His character, or belied the trust His people put in Him. He
suffers not thy foot to be moved ; He neither slumbers nor
sleeps.

^ Christ will keep us as a shepherd doth his flock. What a
possession those of us have who can say, " The Lord is my
shepherd," not " the " or " our," but " my " own, even should there
be thousands of other sheep besides. Why is He called "the
great Shepherd of the sheep " ? Because surely He is Intercessor,
High Priest, Mediator, Surety, Captain of Salvation, Author and
Finisher of Faith, Forerunner, King of Eighteousness, King of
Peace : He is all these, and all else His sheep need ; for see our
provision, " I shall not want." I should think not ; with such a
Shepherd, how can we ? Our position, " He maketh me to lie
down." No sheep lies down until it is satisfied — so our position
as kept is just " to lie down," to rest on His bosom, secure in His
care from all attacks from without or within. . . . Being kept by
such a Shepherd, " surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all
the days of our life." The meaning of this is that in the East
the head shepherd goes in front and two under-shepherds follow
behind the sheep, to pick up any who become lame, or are prone
to wander. Our Shepherd, who is to keep us, has commissioned
Goodness and Mercy to thus follow us. We " shall never perish,
neither shall any one pluck us out of his hand," and " we shall
dwell in the house of the Lord for ever." Having been kept all
the way by His own power, for He will not give this work to
another ; we are so precious to Him that we are to be kept by the
power that created heaven and earth. " Keep them in thine own
name," He prays. The very name of the Lord is at stake.^
* G. Clarke, The Keeper and (he Kept, 56.

6o GUARDIANSHIP IN DAILY LIFE

4. The help and protection of the Lord accommodate themselves
to all our individually varying states and circumstances. Help on
our " right hand " is help for our whole sphere of life ; help " by
day and by night " is help under all changes ; help which subdues
the fierce power of the light and also protects from the evils
which " walk in darkness " is help in all our conditions ; " preserva-
tion for our soul " is help for our whole nature from its centre,
help for body, soul, and spirit; help in our "going out and
coming in " is help watchful and perpetual.

^ I do not know how these words were interpreted when very
literal meanings were attached to the parabolic words about the
streets of gold and the endless song. But they present no
difficulty to us. Indeed, they confirm that view of the future
which is ever taking firmer hold of men's minds, and which is
based on the growing sense of the continuity of life. To offer a
man an eternity of music-laden rest is to offer him a poor thing.
He would rather have his going out and his coming in. Yes, and
he shall have them. All that is purest and best in them shall
remain. Hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of
living and wider visions of life ; still come in to greater and ever
greater thoughts of God.^

^ I know of a " going out " and a " coming in " when we shall
specially need the preserving care of God; and to these, as to
every other, may the promise be extended. There is a " going
out " from this world ; there is a " coming in " to the next world ;
the departure from the present scene of existence on the unknown
futurity. But the Lord shall "preserve thy going out and thy
coming in." Christ Jesus, according to His own declaration, has
the keys of death and the invisible world ; and therefore, it must
be He who dismisses the spirit from the flesh, and opens to it the
separate state.^

^ The last day dawned, bringing a busy morning with corre-
spondence and future plans. At a quarter to five letters and
cheques were brought to him to sign, and he dictated two other
letters. Soon after he fell asleep, and awoke at a quarter to six
and partook of a light meal. During the progress of the meal he
said to his wife, " My head is so heavy, let me rest it on your
face." He appeared to have no pain but a slight choking sensa-
tion. Then he leaned back in his chair and passed away. He
was not afraid of death. " I have looked," he had written not
long previously in sympathizing with a dear friend on the loss of

1 P. C. Ainsworth, The Threshold Oraee, 17. "^ Henry Melvill.

PSALM cxxi. 8 6i

her husband, ** into the face of death. Three times has my life
been given back to me after a dire struggle that nearly ended it
all. But oh ! I can tell you death is not so dark and drear as it
is painted, even to the Christian. I felt as in the embraxje of a
friend." ^

She sat within Life's Banquet Hall at noon,

When word was brought unto her secretly :

" The Master cometh onwards quickly ; soon

Across the Threshold He will call for thee."

Then she rose up to meet Him at the Door,

But turning, courteous, made a farewell brief

To those that sat around. From Care and Grief

She parted first: . . .

Then turning unto twain

That stood together, tenderly and oft

She kissed them on their foreheads, whispering soft:

"Kow must we part; yet leave me not before

Ye see me enter safe within the Door;

Kind bosom-comforters, that by my side

The darkest hour found ever closest bide,

A dark hour waits me, ere for evermore

Night with its heaviness be overpast ;

Stay with me till I cross the Threshold o'er."

So Faith and Hope stayed by her till the last.

But giving both her hands

To one that stood the nearest : " Thou and I

May pass together ; for the holy bands

God knits on earth are never loosed on high.

Long have I walked with thee ; thy name arose

E'en in my sleep, and sweeter than the close

Of music was thy voice ; for thou wert sent

To lead me homewards from my banishment

By devious ways, and never hath my heart

Swerved from thee, though our hands were wrung apart

By spirits sworn to sever us; above

Soon shall I look upon Thee as Thou art."

So she cross'd o'er with Love.^

* Memoirs of the Late Dr. Barnardo, 269.

• Dora Greenwell, The Soul's Parting.

The House of the Lord.

Literature.

Burrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 51.

Cuckson (J.), Faith and Fellowship, 205.

Duncan (W,), God's Book : God's Day : God's House, 73.

Farindon (A.), Sermons, ii. 634.

Leach (C), Sunday Afternoons with Working Men, 253. '

Rawnsley (R. D. B.), Village Sermons, ii. 70.

Stanley (A. P.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 87, 110, 224.

Talbot (E. S.), Some Aspects of Christian Truth, 292.

Tomory (A.), in Alexander Tomory, Indian Missionary, 75.

Voysey (C), Sermons, ix. (1886), No. 13 ; x. (1887), No. 26 ; xvi. (1893),

No. 31 ; xxi. (1898), No. 13 ; xxvi. (1903), No. 34.
Christian World Pulpit, xvii. 190 (J. F. Haynes) ; xxix. 56 (W. Scott) ;

Ixxvi. 123 (J. G. Davies), 316 (A. B. Scott).
Church Family Newspaper, Feb. 3, 1911, 88 (H. H. Robinson).
Clergyman's Magazine, 3rd Ser., xi. (G. Calthrop).
Record, Feb. 7, 1913 (T. J. Madden).

The House of the Lord.

I was glad when they said unto me,

Let us go unto the house of the Lord. — Ps. cxxii. i.

All who have made the Book of Psalms their study must have
been struck with the deep and unaffected piety of the authors.
The psalmists speak throughout the whole book of praising
God, and praying to God as none could speak unless they were
in earnest. There is a fervour in the language used by them
which proves how surely their hearts were interested in what
they uttered; which shows that religion was not to them a
hollow form, something put on for policy or custom's sake, but a
living, animating principle of conduct, the bread of their spiritual
life, as necessary for their happiness as the food they ate was for
their bodily existence.

^ Instances of this heart-felt piety might be quoted from every
portion of the Psalms. To take a few out of the many, we read
in Psalm xxvi. : " Lord, I have loved the habitation of thy house,
and the place where thine honour dwelleth. I will offer in thy
dwelling an oblation with great gladness. I will sing and speak
praise unto the Lord." And in Psalm xxvii. : " One thing have
I desired of the Lord which I will require, even that I may dwell
in the house of the Lord all the days of my life ; to behold the
fair beauty of the Lord, and to visit his temple." Again, at the
opening of the famous Psalm Ixxxiv. and all throughout it : " Oh !
how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of hosts! My soul
hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord ;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. Blessed are
they that dwell in thy house, they will be always praising thee.
. . . One day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had
rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in
the tents of ungodliness." And in Psalm cxvi., that which is so
fittingly read at the churching of women, this is his language
after he had experienced a great deliverance: "What reward
shall I give unto the Lord, for all the benefits that he hath done

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 5

66 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

unto me ? I will receive the cup of salvation, and call upon the
name of the Lord. I will pay my vows unto the Lord in the
sight of all his people ; in the courts of the Lord's house, even in
the midst of thee, O Jerusalem." And once more, in my text
observe the psalmist's joy at the prospect of worshipping in the
tabernacle : " I was glad when they said unto me, We will go
into the house of the Lord." ^

L

The Call to Worship.

"They said unto me, Let us go."

1. Worship is a necessity of our being. The Greeks called
man "anthropos," meaning the upward-looking one. "Man is
the creature of religious instincts, and must worship something,"
is the pronouncement of Kant. If dogmatism be sufferable any-
where, surely it is here ; for man, wherever found, is a worshipping
creature, capable of appreciating, capable of admiring, capable of
extolling. That outburst of the soul, that rapture and rush of
the emotions, that exclamation in the presence of the picturesque,
that is the natural sentiment of worship. Education and study
exalt it into a culture, revelation into a duty.

If there were no God, the human heart must make One, for
where there is no vision of the Infinite, the people perish. Wor-
ship is a true soul- view of God ; rather is it a soul-view of the
true God. It is the highest admiration, because the admiration
of the highest. Worship is worthship — a confession of worth. It
is a reverential upward look. It is the attitude of the penitent
rising and turning his face skyward.

^ One of the most popular legends in Brittany is that relating
to an imaginary town called Is, which is supposed to have been
swallowed up by the sea at some unknown time. There are
several places along the coast which are pointed out as the site of
this imaginary city, and the fishermen have many strange tales to
tell of it. According to them, the tips of the spires of the churches
may be seen in the hollow of the waves when the sea is rough,
while during a calm the music of the bells, ringing out a hymn
appropriate to the day, rises above the waters. I often fancy
that 1 have at the bottom of my heart a city of Is, with its bells

^ R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, ii. 71.

PSALM cxxii. I 67

calling to prayer a recalcitrant congregation. At times I halt to
listen to these gentle vibrations, which seem as if they came from
immeasurable depths, like voices from another world.^

2. Our social instincts cry out for common worship. " They
said unto me, Let us go," There is one thing in the services of
the sanctuary that cannot otherwise be obtained. It is the social
element in worship. The individual peculiarity is toned down in
the general praise and prayer. The individual burden is forgotten
in the common thanksgiving. The tempted, overburdened heart
finds release in the assembling together with other souls. The
solitary stranger, joining in praise and sharing the communal
life of the congregation, forgets for the time his solitude. There
is something infectious in the spiritual sense of so many wills
gathered together with one accord. The social element in wor-
ship is not only part of the gregarious instinct, but in the con-
vergence of many wills on one undertaking it produces a volume
of prayers that is far greater than the sum of individual prayers
would be. There is action and reaction of spiritual influences.
This is perhaps most noticeable in great evangelistic meetings or
spiritual conventions, where deep religious emotions are stirred
up, and where waves of spiritual influence may almost be felt.
But it is true, more or less, of every congregational group.
Different hymns appeal to different minds and stir up different
reactions. Different verses of the passages of the Bible which
are read touch different natures and appeal to different experi-
ences. One sentence in a prayer finds its way into one heart,
another into another. The wistful, the weary, the colourless, the
jubilant, the successful, the defeated draw from the service their
cognate note. Each life-experience seems to attract as by a
spiritual magnet its kindred thought.

We may rightly ask people to consider what is likely to be
the effect of the neglect or disuse on a large scale of the worship
of God. Doubtless it may mean a very little difference to indi-
viduals. We may let our worship be so poor and mechanical
that the loss of it makes at the moment little difference. It is
the way of such things that they mean little to those who use
them little. But, even so, in the bulk they are worth a great

^ E. Renan, Recollections of my Youth, p. vii.

68 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

deal. We make each our contribution, or fail to make it, to the
nation's worship, and through this to its higher life. This at the
least ; but how much more if worship is rightly used, if it brings
the sense of God's presence and the touch of eternal things, if
conscience is brought weekly to the bar ; if will and purpose
receive reminder and encouragement, if worship is allowed to
give that which is to be found in it by those who seek.

^ The boy was expressing the opinion of many older than
himself when he said to his mother, " I should like to be just such
a Christian as father is, for no one can tell whether he is a
Christian or not." This father is like the clock attached to a
certain church, which possessed neither face nor hands, but
which was wound up by the sexton on Sundays and continued
to tick year after year, affording an apt illustration of the religion
which many are content to possess. The movements of the
clock were as regular and accurate as anyone could desire, but,
inasmuch as it kept the time to itself, no one was the better for
its existence.^

3. Our highest moral life requires the open acknowledgment
of God. If a man does not know and remember how much is
above him, he will see nothing true. He will begin by thinking
himself big, and end by finding himself and everything else little.
He must look up because the truth of his nature is to belong and
to depend. He cannot stand alone. His own strength is weakness.
He is strong or wise only by what is given him, and put into him.
Or he will begin by thinking he can do everything, and come to
think that he can do nothing, and that there is nothing to do
that is really worth doing. He must look up because the best
in us is not what we are, but what we aspire to be. A man
who does not look up has no ideals, no sense of mystery ; he
lacks reverence, and reverence is the essence of manhood. With-
out it life is dry, and petty and vulgar.

-/The Church stands for the most vital thing in life — the art of
teaching men how to live. On creeds and articles the minds of
men have always differed, and there is no sure evidence forth-
coming that the future will not repeat the past ; but right and
wrong are as old as Orion and its nebulae. Eight will never lose
its lustre; never wrong its shame. Kepeatedly we hear the

* C. H. Robinson.

PSALM cxxii. I 69

criticism made that the Church is narrow; but how other-
wise could she be ? Is she not the only organization in the
world to-day that stands for unflinching antagonism to wrong ?
Abolish the Church and the supremacy of evil would be un-
challenged, the field abandoned, and Satan have his own wicked
swing,

^ Many years ago a merchant in Liverpool became financially
involved, through no fault of his own, and had to come to a
settlement with his creditors. He gave up everything and went
to live in a small house with his wife and children. He came
to church regularly twice each Sunday, and with him all his
family. As the years passed his business grew and prospered,
and in due time he called his creditors together, paid his debts
with interest and stepped forth a free man. His creditors made
him a valuable presentation of silver in recognition of his splendid
fight and his sterling and honourable character. That man told
me he could not have held on, or held out in the dark days that
fell upon him and his, but for the courage which came to him
through the services of the Church, and the ministry of the
Word and Sacraments. He trusted in God and he was not
confounded.^

II.

The Place of Wokship.

** Let us go unto the house of the Lord."

"The house of the Lord " is an expression which we at once recog-
-nize as figurative. " Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can-
not contain thee ; how much less this house that I have builded ! "
So it was said even in the Jewish dispensation. In the Christian
dispensation it is still more strongly expressed that the only
fitting temple of the Most High is the sacred human conscience,
or the community of good men throughout the world, or that vast
unseen universe which is the true tabernacle, greater and more
perfect than any made by hands. Nevertheless, like all familiar
metaphors the expression "the house of God" has a deep root
in the human heart and mind. Our idea of the invisible almost
inevitably makes for itself a shell or husk from visible things.
This is the germ of religious architecture. This is the reason why

1 T. J. Madden, in The Record, Feb. 7, 1913, p. 126.

70 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

the most splendid buildings in the world have been temples or
churches. This is the reason why even the most spiritual, even
the most puritanical, religion clothes itself with the drapery not
only of words, and sounds, and pictures, but of wood, and stone,
and marble. A Friends' meeting-house is as really a house of
God, and therefore as decisive a testimony to the sacredness of
architecture, as the most magnificent cathedral.

1. There is a value in the association of religion with places.
That value lies in the help which material things can be to the
spiritual life of beings who have material forms. The wholly
spiritual is at present unattainable by us. We are compelled to
shape the spiritual in formal words, and to present the spiritual
in material images. The sacraments are based on this value of
sensible helps to spiritual feeling. And so historic and beautiful
church-buildings cultivate reverence; familiar services nourish
the spirit of worship ; the church we have attended since child-
hood, or in which we have felt the power of Divine things,
readily quickens emotion and renews faith. The hermit who
retires even from hallowing associations does but make new ones
for himself, for none of us can afford to neglect the help that
sacred places and things may be to us.

^ An unfamiliar instance of special interest in sacred places
was given by Professor Minas Teheraz to the "World's Parlia-
ment." Speaking of the Armenian Church, he said : " One result
of the manifold persecutions has been to strengthen the attach-
ment of the Armenians to the Church of St. Gregory, the
Illuminator. Etchmiadzin has become a word of enchantment,
graven in the soul of every Armenian. The Armenians of the
mother country bow down with love before this sanctuary which
has already seen 1591 summers. And as regards those who have
left their native land, if it is far from their eyes it is not far from
their hearts. A Persian monarch. Shah Abbas, had forcibly
transported into his dominion fourteen thousand Armenian
families. Like the captive Israelites at the remembrance of
Jerusalem, these Armenians always sighed at the recollection of
Etchmiadzin. In order to keep them in their new country. Shah
Abbas conceived the project of destroying Etchmiadzin, of trans-
porting the stones to Djoulfa (Ispahan), and there constructing a
similar convent. He actually transported the central stone of
the chief altar, the baptismal fonts, and other important pieces,

PSALM cxxii. I 71

but the emotion of the Armenians was so great that he was forced
to give up his project of vandalism." ^

2. God is not tied to particular places. He is not confined to
temples made with hands, and in all ages and lands devout souls
alone with God in the mountain or the valley or the unpeopled
desert have been able to worship Him with great concentration
in the solitudes of nature. Nor does it obviate private and
personal prayer. "When thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy
Father which is in secret" is Jesus' prescription for personal
devotion. The true believer prays naturally to God for help, for
grace, rendering thanks, taking counsel with God. The sources of
his strength are found mainly in his private prayers.

One of the grandest features of Christianity is its cosmo-
politanism. It finds a home everywhere, and is everywhere at
home. In this it differs from Paganism, which must have its
hallowed groves ere the oracular response can be gained. It is
unlike Judaism also, which had its solitary Temple where alone
the symbol of Divinity was displayed. In the memorable con-
versation which our Saviour had with the woman of Samaria, He
emphasized the superiority of the Christian religion. " Woman,
believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this
mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." That is,
neither here nor there by way of restriction — the genius of the
gospel is too expansive to limit itself to a solitary shrine. There
is to be no tabernacle of exclusive worship, but anywhere and
everywhere men may rear a temple, and the Lord God will dwell
in it.

It is the life of the members, and not the form of structure,
that makes a Church living. It is as each one is a temple of the
Holy Ghost that the combined brotherhood becomes a Christian
Church in the highest sense. It is the spirit of prayer and
service pervading the people that makes a Church distinguished
The quickened heart, to give for others money, service, self, is a
mark of the living Church. Devotion to the service of man in
the house of God draws out the most devoted talent of the best
men and women. In the great Christian lands there is a large
army of Christian workers in every living congregation on whom,

1 R. Tuck.

^^ THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

rather than on the minister, devolves the management of the
various activities of the church. Behind them are the main body
of the people aiding by prayer and effort. These are the living
stones.

^ Why not then worship only in the open air ? Convenience
forbids it as the normal form of worship. Why not worship in a
barn ? Is God not there ? Yea, verily. And in times of perse-
cution in the past, in Scotland and other lands, men and women
have been glad to worship anywhere — in caves, on the mountain-
side, in barns, or any shelter that offered. But in settled times
Christian people, animated by the same feeling as King David
expressed, felt that it was unfitting to worship God in circum-
stances less worthy than they themselves possessed. Their
gratitude to God, and their own aesthetic tastes, dictated tasteful
churches, simple yet elegant, rich in hallowed associations,
solemnized by spiritual transactions between the soul and God.^

3. A common centre of worship promotes unity and brother-
hood. It was a national religion that was celebrated and re-
inforced during these pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The little village
synagogue was a temporary makeshift, the Temple at Jerusalem
was the house of worship. In the former the religious heart was
fed but not satisfied. Life was maintained, duty was taught, but
there was neither the beauty of holiness nor the glory of God that
was enshrined in the central Temple. In a way, the throne of
David was set right in the middle of the Temple. The law of the
land and its administration issued from the Jewish Church. The
arrangements of social life issued from the Jewish Church. The
regulations of commerce issued from the Jewish Church, And so
the Jew was glad as he went up to Zion because king and court,
social convention and social habit, the rulers of commerce, all
found their inspiration and their mandate in the Church.

\ There was a time in Scotland when the Church stood
immediately behind the King's throne as counsellor, when the
Church regulated the homes of men, and their habits, when the
Church conducted commercial treaties, when the Church granted
charters to boroughs. All that is now changed in Scotland. It
is so much changed that some say the Church has become little
more than a mere relic in this laud. It is so much changed that
some declare the province of the Church is so limited as to be on

* Alixander Tomory, Indian Missionary, 77.

PSALM cxxii. 1 73

the point of disappearing altogether ; but I think I read the signs
of the times sufficiently accurately when I declare that again in
our time the conviction is deepening and growing apace that a
nation can be strong in the various aspects of its life, its social
life, its commercial life, its political life, only as it is infused with
those ideals and eternal verities that are summed up in the name
of religion.^

III.

The Spieit of Woeship.

" I was glad when they said unto me. Let us go unto the house of the
Lord."

The Hebrew poet was sure of one thing — that it did him good
to go into the House of God. For though God is always near us,
so that we cannot get away from Him though we may close our
hearts and lock our doors, yet in public worship we are drawn
closer to God. We come into His very presence, we seek to look
into His face, we desire to enter into His pavilion and into the
secret of His tabernacle. Our hearts are stirred, and, like the
disciples of old, we feel that the flame of love is fanned as He
talks to us and allows us to talk to Him.

^ Oliver Wendell Holmes does not hesitate to bear witness to
the need, in his own case, of the weekly " means of grace." He
says : " I am a regular church-goer. I should go for various
reasons if I did not love it, but I am fortunate enough to find
pleasure in the midst of devout multitudes, whether I can accept
all their creed or not. For I find there is in the corner of my
heart ' a little plant called Eeverence,' which wants to be watered
about once a week."

^ Better known, perhaps, than that of any other Christian
household, is the domestic life of Gregory Nazianzen, the poet
of Eastern Christendom, and one of the greatest of its orators and
theologians. Gregory's mother, Nonna, a woman of ardent piety,
born of a Christian family, and carefully trained in the faith, was
" a housewife after Solomon's own heart " — so her son describes
her — " submissive to her husband, yet not ashamed to be his guide
and teacher." It was Nonna's constant prayer that her husband,
Gregory, should become a convert, for, though a man of high

1 A. B. Scott.

74 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

character and exemplary life, he was a pagan. A dream inspired
by a psalm helped her to gain her heart's desire. Pagan though
he was, her husband seems to have known the Psalms, for he
dreamed that he was singing the words, " I was glad when they
said unto me, We will go into the House of the Lord " (Ps. cxxii.).
The impression was too deep to pass away when he awoke. After
a short preparation, he was baptized, and eventually became, and
for forty-five years remained, Bishop of Nazianzus (329-74).^

1. If we take the psalm as referring to the return from the
Captivity we may imagine how the pilgrim would express his
delight at finding himself once more in sight or in prospect of
home. The psalms and prophecies of the time describe the delight
with which the travellers started on their westward journey ; how
they mounted ridge after ridge, and caught the first view of their
own country ; how the beacon-fires flashing from their native hills
welcomed them onwards ; how at last their feet stood fast " within
thy gates, 0 Jerusalem." This is one part of the feeling of the
return of the exiles, and it became the root of that patriotic senti-
ment which flourished henceforth in the Jewish nation with a
vigour never known before.

There is another feeling in the background, which gives
additional force to this passionate home-sickness and patriotic
fervour. They had not merely been absent from home. They
had been sojourning in a mighty empire wholly unlike their own.
They had seen the splendours of Babylon ; they had mixed with
the princes and potentates of Chaldea, Persia, and Media ; they
had drunk in all the influences of those far-off seats of Oriental
wisdom. Their ideas of religion, of history, and of science had
become enlarged. If in some respects they were a lesser nation
than they were before the Exile, in some respects they were much
greater. For they had received a new and serious impulse which
ended in nothing less than the greatest event of the world's
history — the advent of Christianity.

^ There has not been a generation of men for the last three
thousand years, there will not be a generation of men to the end
of time, in which some will not read with sympathy that story
on which the greatest master of ancient poetry has spent all his
art — which tells of the return of Ulysses after his long absence ;

' B. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life, 15.

PSALM cxxii. 1 75

the wife counting the weary days in the hills of Ithaca ; the dog
leaping up in his master's face and dying of joy; the aged
servants recognizing their long-lost chief as he treads once more
his father's threshold. To any man worthy of the name, the
thoughts of mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and
sisters, are among the most inspiring, the most purifying, the
most elevating of all the motives which God has given us to
steady our steps, and guide our consciences, and nerve us for duty,
through all the changes and chances of this mortal life. Happy,
thrice happy, is he or she who keeps this sanctuary pure and
undefiled. False to his country, and false to the true interests and
the holy progress of mortals, is he or she who undermines or
betrays it. Not charity only, but all the virtues of which charity
is the bond begin and end at Home.^

2. The Psalmist was glad because he approached God as a son
and not as a slave. We delight in the services of the House of
God when we realize that the Great God Himself is pleased with
the spiritual sacrifice, the offering of prayer and praise and
thanksgiving and intercession which we bring. We must
remember that our God is a Father, and " Father " is the name
whereby He especially manifests Himself to us. A King He is of
course ; a Judge too, a Eevealer, a Saviour, even a Friend ; but,
beyond and above all. He is a Father. And when we really grasp
the idea of His Fatherhood, it is not so difficult for us to under-
stand the feelings with which He regards the approaches of His
children to His sacred presence.

^ I can imagine a monarch seated on high, on his throne,
looking coldly down upon his subjects, and receiving with little
or no emotion but that of a gratified pride, and of a resolve to
have his due, the presents which they pour out profusely at his
feet. But if the monarch were also a father the circumstances
would be radically altered, and I should expect the feeblest
offering, if it were but really made in love, to find favour in his
eyes; just as I expect that whilst the great Sovereign of the
universe listens with complacency to the glorious hymns and
anthems of the hosts of heaven. He finds perhaps a sweeter music
in the lispings of a little child, or in the broken utterances of a
penitent sinner just turning from his sin, and scarcely able at
present to believe that he will be accepted, or in the worship of
such people as we are, offering our sacrifice sincerely, offering it
* A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, 111.

^6 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

in the name of Jesus Christ, but yet paiufully conscious of the
imperfection with which we realize unseen and eternal things, and
of the wandering thoughts which so frequently drag our souls
down from the heights of spiritual contemplation to engage them
with the veriest trifles of the passing moment.^

^ When upon the battle-field we receive our dying comrade's
last message to his wife, when we pass in the rude hospital from
one sufferer to another, when with a few we have to sacrifice life
without one single hope of being saved, that we may keep a post
for the safety of an army: we do not speak then of a God of
ideas, of an impersonal Essence of Love and Truth, but of a living,
loving Friend, who will be a Father to the widow, who stands, as
if in human form, and speaks in human voice to the wounded who
is torn with pain, to the doomed who dies, unknown, for duty.
In such hours the Idealist worships the personal Fatherhood of
God. Go to the poor mechanic who has worked all his life in a
city garret, and talk of the God who is infinite Life in Nature ;
go to men at some great crisis, when their work has broken up,
when their heart is broken, and speak of the pitiless action of
Force, and the hard fighter with the real ills of poverty, or the
tortured man, will mock at your consolation. "When I ask
bread," he will say, " you give me a stone." But tell them of a
personal Father who loves and pities them, who chastens because
He loves, whose tenderness goes hand in hand with justice, who
sits with them at the bench, and bears, through sympathy, their
poverty : who knows their suffering, and will not leave them or
forsake them in the hour of their bitter need ; who is human to
them with a higher, tenderer humanity than any they can get on
earth, and I know their eyes will light with hope, their spirits
take a Divine courage, their patience grow so beautiful that all
around will see that there is a higher Power there than earthly
gratitude.2

3. In true worship, reverence and intelligent interest must be
joined to enthusiasm. Indeed we cannot have worship without
reverence. Keverence is the very essence of true religion, and
therefore wherever reverence is wanting there can be no true
worship. The belief of the Gospel, which implies the possession
by us of Jesus as our Saviour from sin and death, should make us
glad — glad with a great, deep joy of which the world knows
nothing. But a happy or glad heart is not opposed to, or incon-
sistent with, a devout and reverent spirit ; and however great may

1 G. Calthrop. « Stopford A. Brooke.

PSALM cxxii. I ^>^

be our joy in communion with God, we ought to be reverent when
we come before Him.

One cannot help wondering that some people who do go to the
House of God should go at all, they show so little interest in the
services. You see their want of interest even in the manner in
which they go to their pews ; and you see it further in their habit
of gazing around them at the gathering worshippers before the
services begin, and in their vacant look during the time the
services are going on. With them, church-going is a mere
religious form. They resemble the Northern Farmer of whom
Tennyson tells us in one of his poems, who said about his
minister — •

An' I hallus coom'd to 's chooch afoor moy Sally wur dead.
An' 'card 'um a bummin' awaay loike a buzzard-clock ower

my 'ead.
An' I niver knaw'd whot a mean'd but I thowt a 'ad summut

to saay.
An' I thowt a said whot a owt to 'a said an' I coom'd awaay.

\ One of the best men whom I have ever known, a man of
great intellectual gifts and acquirements, who had cherished
through life the most exalted views of God, and much of whose
time was spent on his knees in prayer, as he drew near the close
of his life felt a sense of awe almost amounting to fear — though
he had no doubt of his safety — as he thought of entering into the
presence of God. Yes, and the more holy anyone really becomes
— the more anyone knows about God — the more like to God any-
one becomes, the greater will be his reverence for God, the more
solemnized will he feel when in God's presence.^

4. The Psalmist's gladness was inspired by the feeling that he
was a member of a goodly fellowship. He has his eye upon the
past. He is regarding the days that are gone, as he mounts up
this road to Jerusalem ; as his own feet trace the way that leads
up to Zion he finds there footprints of vanished generations of
God's own pilgrim people, and in his mind's eye he finds himself
enrolled in the august procession of God's own people that, going
up this road before him in past days, have found it the road of
duty, the road of salvation, the road of their soul's peace ; and so
he says " I have joy." He had the joy which is begotten in us by

^ W. Duncan, God's Book : God's Day : God's Rouse, 84.

78 THE HOUSE OF THE LORD

the communion of saints ; he had the gladness which is engendered
in us by what the writer to the Hebrews calls being " compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses."

^ To this house we come, drawn not by arbitrary command
which we fear to disobey; not by self-interest, temporal or
spiritual, which we deem it prudent to consult ; not, I trust, from
dead conventionalism, that brings the body and leaves the soul ;
but by a common quest of some holy spirit to penetrate and
purify our life ; by a common desire to quit its hot and level dust,
and from its upland slopes of contemplation inhale the serenity of
God ; by the secret sadness of sin, that can delay its confessions,
and bear its earthliness no more; by the deep though dim
consciousness that the passing weeks do not leave us where they
find us, but plant us within nearer distance, and give us a more
intimate view, of that fathomless eternity wherein so many dear
and mortal things have dropped from our imploring eyes. It is
no wonder that in meditations solemn as these we love and seek
each other's sympathy. It is easy, no doubt, to- journey alone in
the broad sunshine and on the beaten highways of our lot : but
over the midnight plain, and beneath the still immensity of
darkness, the traveller seeks some fellowship for his wanderings.
And what is religion but the midnight hemisphere of life, whose
vault is filled with the silence of God, and whose everlasting stars,
if giving no clear light, yet fill the soul with dreams of immeasur-
able glory ? It will be an awful thing to each of us to be alone,
when he takes the passage from the mortal to the immortal, and
is borne along — with unknown time for expectant thought —
through the space that severs earth from heaven : and till then,
at least, we will not part, but speak with the common voice of
supplicating trust of that which awaits us all.^

^ When religious worship has become a customary social act,
a man who sympathizes with the religious idea is right to show
public sympathy with it; he ought to weigh very carefully his
motives for abstaining. If it is indolence, or a fear of being
thought precise, or a desire to be thought independent, or a
contempt for sentiment that keeps him back, he is probably in
the wrong; nothing but a genuine and deep-seated horror of
formalism justifies him in protesting against a practice which is
to many an avenue of the spiritual life. A lack of sympathy
with certain liturgical expressions, a fear of being hypocritical,
of being believed to hold the orthodox position in its entirety,
justifies a man in not entering the ministry of the Church, even

^ J«mes Martineau, Endeavours after tlie Christian Life, 138.

PSALM cxxii. I 79

if he desires on general grounds to do so, but these are paltry
motives for cutting oneself off from communion with believers.
It is clear that Christ Himself thought many of the orthodox
practices of the exponents of the popular religion wrong, but He
did not for that reason abjure attendance upon accustomed rites ;
and it is far more important to show sympathy with an idea, even
if one does not agree with all the details, than to seem, by pro-
testing against erroneous detail, to be out of sympathy with the
idea. The mistake is when a man drifts into thinking of cere-
monial worship as a practice specially and uniquely dear to God.
There are some who have a quickened sense of fellowship and
unity, when prayers and aspirations are uttered in concert ; but
the error is to desire merely the bodily presence of one's fellow-
creatures for such a purpose, rather than their mental and
spiritual acquiescence. The result of such a desire is that it is
often taught, or at all events believed, that there is a kind of
merit in the attendance at public worship. The only merit of it
lies in the case of those who sacrifice a personal disinclination to
the desire to testify sympathy for the religious life. It is no more
meritorious for those who personally enjoy it, than it is for a lover
of pictures to go to a picture-gallery, for thus the hunger of the
spirit is satisfied.^

' A. C. Benson, The Silent Isle, 63.

Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 6

Literature.

Banks (L. A.), David and His Friends, 224.

Davies (T.), Sermons and Homiletical Exijositions, ii. 455.

Devenish (E. I.), LiTce Afi^les of Gold, 47.

Hare (J. C), Parish Sermons, i. 347.

Henderson (A.), Sermons, 190.

MacArthur (R. S.), The Calvary Pulpit, 103.

Mackennal (A.), Christ's Healing Touch, 30.

Macleod (A.), A Man's Gift, 117.

Milne (W.), The Precious Things of God, 45.

Skrine (J. H.), The Mountain Mother, 126.

Sowter (G. A.), Sowing and Reaping, 1.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 867.

Taylor (W. M.), The Boy Jesus, 277.

Thomas (J.), Sermons (Myrtle Street Pulpit), ii. 263.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xxxii. (1909), No. 37.

Christian Treasury, xxx. (1874) 601 (P. Fairbairn).

Christian World Pulpit, vi. 206 (A. C. Price) ; xix. 186 (A. Scott) ; Ix.

241 (J. Watson).
Sunday Magazine, 1888, pp. 613, 696 (M. G. Pearse).

&i

Sowing in Tears, Reaping in Joy.

Though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing forth the seed ;
He shall come again with joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

Ps. cxxvi. 6.

This is a song of grateful remembrance celebrating the return of
the Jews from exile. But though it begins, as so many of the
psalms do, with a local reference, it ends with a general applica-
tion to universal human life. The end of the Captivity came
unexpectedly ; the singer declares that it was li^e a dream to
them ; they could hardly believe at first that it was true. But
when they were sure that they were awake, and that the long
exile was really over, that they were going home again to rebuild
the Temple, and the city of their pride and love, their mouths
were filled with laughter and their voices burst forth into singing.
Gratitude towards God swelled their hearts ; they gave God all
the glory; they bore testimony before the heathen that it was
God who had done these great things for them. Studying this
signal illustration of the sweetness of victory after defeat, of the
blessedness of home after exile, of the glory of the harvest after
the long seedtime and waiting, the singer bursts forth into inspired
poetry, drawing from this illustration a beautiful truth applic-
able to human life in general, and of special spiritual signifi-
cance to those who seek to bless and uplift human hearts.
"They that sow in tears," he sings with confidence, "shall
reap in joy. Though he goeth on his way weeping, bearing
forth the seed; he shall come again with joy, bringing his
sheaves with him."

^ Some one has said that the finest example of the use in
English literature of a quotation from the Bible is the refer-
ence to this text in Thackeray's Esmond. Entering Winchester
Cathedral on his return from the wars, Harry Esmond sees again
the widowed Lady Castlewood, who in his youth had been to him
more than sister and mother, and whom he now loves as a woman.

83

84 SOWING IN TEARS, REAPING IN JOY

The period of their separation is ended. " I knew," she says to
him at the close of the service, " that you would come back. And
to-day, Henry, in the anthem, when they sang it, ' When the Lord
turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream,'
I thought, yes, like them that dream — them that dream. And
then it went, ' They that sow in tears shall reap in joy ; and he
that goeth forth and weepeth, shall doubtless come again with
rejoicing, bring his sheaves with him ' ; I looked up from the book,
and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw you. I knew you
would come, my dear, and saw the gold sunshine round your
head. . . . But now — now you are come again, bringing your
sheaves with you, my dear." She burst into a wild flood of
weeping as she spoke ; she laughed and sobbed on the young
man's heart, crying out wildly, " Bringing your sheaves with you
— your sheaves with you ! " ^

I.

Sowing in Teaes.

1. The sower is represented as weeping. The language here
■s very strong. One commentator puts it in this form, "may
indeed weep every step that he goes." It has also been rendered,
" takes no step of his way without weeping." Dr. Thomson, the
author of The Land and the Book, in giving an interpretation of
the Psalmist's words, says : " I never saw people sowing in tears
exactly, but have often known them to do it in fear and distress
sufficient to draw them from any eye. In seasons of great scarcity,
the poor peasants part in sorrow with every measure of precious
seed cast into the ground. It. is like taking bread out of the
mouths of their children ; and in such times many bitter tears are
actually shed over it. The distress is actually so great that
government is obliged to furnish seed, or none would be sown.
Ibrahim Pasha did this more than once within my remem-
brance."

In all of this there is much to make sowing sad work. Again,
the extreme danger to which the sower was exposed made his
labour one of sadness. Dr. Thomson tells us that the sower was
often obliged to drop the plough and seize the sword. His fields
were far from his home, and so near the lawless desert. As in

' W. M. Thackeray, Tlie History of Henry Esmond, Bk. ii. chap. vi.

PSALM cxxvi. 6 85

Job's day, when the oxen were ploughing and the asses feeding
beside them, the Sabeans came and took them all away, so often
since fierce hordes from the deserts have swept down upon the
peaceful husbandman, and robbed him of seed and implements,
sparing only his life. In all of this there was much to make the
work of sowing also a work of weeping. Again, the frequent
fruitlessness of the labour made it sad toil. The laud had gone to
weeds. The ground was fallow. It was no easy task to break
up this stubborn soil. Their once fruitful land was barren, and
its cultivation was a work of the utmost toil. Their implements
were poor and inefficient, their oxen were small and weak, and
their own skill was very unlike that of the farmer of modern days.
For these and similar reasons the sowing of the seed might
literally be called a work of weeping.

'''^ 2. It is a law of the spiritual life that through tribulation we
enter into the joy of the Kingdom. God means us to reap in joy,
but first we must sow in tears. See, for example, how this law
meets us at the very threshold of the Christian life. Great though
the blessedness to which Christ invites us is, the beginnings of
His life in the soul come to us amid tears. Then for the first
time we see the mystery of the cross; and what strikes us, in
what we see, is the spectacle of a Saviour there for us. We see
the wounds in His body, but, behind these, wounds in ourselves,
for the healing of which He died. No one ever truly opens
his eyes on these facts who does not weep. Sharp and into
the very heart goes the pangs ; " It is I who have crucified the
Lord!"

\ Contemplation of Christ's sufferings, combined with prayer,
will do more than any other exercise to cause genuine sorrow for
having offended the love of God. ... In following the scenes of
the Passion, contemplate our Lord as the sin-bearer, and think of
each insult, or indignity suffered by Him as representing to us the
penalties due to our own offences. . . . Thus we come to feel the
stirrings of real sorrow for having rejected God's love. Moved by
that sorrow, we take our place beside Him in His Passion, endur-
ing our small sufferings cheerfully, uniting our half-hearted
penitence with His Divine, all-comprehensive sorrow, whereby it
can be deepened, and strengthened, and purified.^

* Piehop Chandler, Ara Coeli.

86 SOWING IN TEARS, REAPING IN JOY

3, Then the thought of the shortcomings of our service is enough
to moisten the driest eye. That in a sin-stricken world so much
needs to be done is bad enough, but that we should so often leave
undone the very little we can do, that we should let the ground
around us lie fallow or run to weed, that we should permit the
forces of sin to do their worst while we are content to do nothing
at all, is infinitely worse. We must be stony-hearted indeed if
such thoughts as these never cause a pang at our breast or a tear
in our eye.

^ There is nothing more grateful in the service of Christ than
spontaneity — nothing more welcome to Himself, nothing more
welcome to His servants. To have some services offered, to know
of some kind deed done, quite apart from any pressure or appeal
or even suggestion — that is so like Jesus that it is a joy to think
of it. We are so ready to wait till someone moves, instead of
following unbidden the first impulse of our hearts; we are so
inclined to act only under the spur or the whip ; we are so ready
to criticize instead of helping, that willingness is a cardinal virtue
indeed.^

4. Lastly, there is the sorrow of disappointment. All earnest
labourers are liable to fits of despondency. Christian labourers
certainly not less than others. Overwork, perhaps, is followed by
reaction, or the too eager hope is disappointed because we do not
see any results for all our doing. We think that our fellow-
labourers are not as earnest as we, that we alone are bearing the
burden and heat of the day. Then there comes up the question.
What is the use of all our toil ? the murmur, " Verily I have
laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nought, and in vain."
The whole world seems weary ; all effort appears but restlessness ;
there is no profit to all the labour that is done under the sun.
One generation passeth away and another cometh; life is too
short for hope, too short for any effective effort. " The sun
also ariseth, and the sun goeth down " ; " all the rivers run into
the sea, yet the sea is not full " ; " all things are full of labour ; man
cannot utter it ; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear
filled with hearing. The tiling that hath been, it is that which
shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun."

1 p.. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 86.

PSALM cxxvi. 6 Sy

We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim, with weeds:
What fame is left for human deeds

In endless age ?

Therefore we hate life ; " because the work that is wrought under
the sun is grievous unto " us ; " for all is vanity and vexation of
spirit." Yet for all our despondency, the call to labour ceases
not. If we would not be faithless to all we have known of duty
and of God ; if we would not be false to all we have learnt of life,
and to every principle by which our souls are moulded, we must
do the work that lies ready to our hands. We have taken up the
basket, and the furrows are still yawning to receive the seed : we
must sow, though we sow in despondency and in tears. God's
great call to us is to labour, and His call to labour continues
though there is no joy to us in working. But it is still
God's call, and not our gladness, that is to give character to
our lives ; the claim of duty ceases not with our impulses of
joyful work.

^ Lessons of persevering toil, of contented doing of preparatory
work, of confidence that no such labour can fail to be profitable
to the doer and to the world, have been drawn for centuries from
the sweet words of this psalm. Who can tell how many hearts
they have braced, how much patient toil they have inspired ?
The Psalmist was sowing seed the fruit of which he little dreamed
of when he wrote them, and his sheaves will be an exceeding
weight indeed. The text gives assurance fitted to animate to toil
in the face of dangers without, and in spite of a heavy heart —
namely, that no seed sown and watered with tears is lost ; and
further, that, though it often seems to be the law for earth that
one soweth and another reapeth, in deepest truth "every man
shall receive his own reward, according to his own labour," inas-
much as, hereafter, if not now, whatsoever of faith and toil and
holy endeavour a man soweth, trusting to God to bless the spring-
ing thereof, that shall he also reap. In the highest sense and in
the last result the prophet's great words are ever true : " They
shall not plant, and another eat ... for my chosen shall long
enjoy the work of their hands." ^

^ I saw in seedtime a husbandman at plough in a very raining
day ; asking him the reason why he would not rather leave off
* A. Maclaren, The Book of Psalms, 321,

88 SOWING IN TEARS, REAPING IN JOY

than labour in such foul weather, his answer was returned to me
in their country rhyme :

Sow beans in the mud,

And they'll come up like a wood.

This could not but mind me of David's expression, " They that sow
in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth,
bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him." These last five years have been
a wet and woful seedtime to me, and many of my afflicted
brethren.. Little hope have we, as yet, to come again to our own
homes, and, in a literal sense, now to bring our sheaves, which we
see others daily carry away on their shoulders. But if we shall
not share in the former or latter harvest here on earth, the third
and last in heaven we hope undoubtedly to receive.^

Sow; — while the seeds are lying

In the warm earth's bosom deep,

And your warm tears fall upon it — ••
They will stir in their quiet sleep;

And the green blades rise the quicker,
Perchance, for the tears you weep.

Then sow; — for the hours are fleeting.
And the seed must fall to-day;

And care not what hands shall reap it,
Or if you shall have passed away

Before the waving corn-fields

Shall gladden the sunny day.

Sow; and look onward, upward,

Where the starry light appears —

Where in spite of the coward's doubting,
Or your own heart's trembling fears,

You shall reap in joy the harvest
You have sown to-day in tears.*

II.

Keaping in Joy.

Now comes the promise — " He shall come again with joy, bring-
ing his sheaves with him." We have here in the Hebrew a striking

* Thomas Fuller, Oood Thmighta in Worse Timet.

* A. A. Procter, Legends and Lyrics, i. 134.

PSALM cxxvi. 6 89

form of expression. It is the combination of the finite tense with
the infinitive ; it is difficult in our idiom to bring out the exact
thought. In some versions it is rendered, "Coming, he shall
come." This, however, conveys neither the peculiar form nor the
precise sense of the Hebrew phrase. Luther's repetition of the
finite tense, most scholars are agreed, gives us the best approxima-
tion to the force of the original, " He shall come, he shall come."
The certainty of His coming again is the thought ; this is what
our common version, with its " shall doubtless come again," clearly
teaches.

1. The sower shall shout in the joy of his harvest. He goes
forth in the dull winter when leaden clouds hang overhead, and
the wild winds moan dismally, and the rain-showers sweep
suddenly upon him, and the dead leaves are swept by every gust,
and the trees stretch up their bare black arms to heaven. But
though it begins thus, it has another ending. There comes the
happy time when the row of reapers bend over the falling corn ;
when they that bind the sheaves are busy, and others pile the
shocks ; when the laden waggons go homewards with the precious
burden, and about the farmsteads are they who build the stacks.
Then shall the sower come again. He who went out with hand-
f uls shall come back with armfuls. He who scattered seed shall
gather sheaves. He who went out with a basket shall come with
a waggon-load.

^ At Clanwilliam he heard some wonderful and well-authen-
ticated instances of the marvellous fertility of the soil near the
Oliphants Eiver, where in good seasons the land yields even two-
hundredfold. Mr. Fryer, one of the churchwardens, had himself
seen " a stool of wheat which, after successive cuttings, had thrown
out 320 stalks " ; and knew of a particular crop which was even
more wonderful : A farmer sowed ^ of a muid, or sack, of corn ;
the river overflowed and he reaped 57 sacks ! He found rather a
difficulty in disposing of it all, and next year he did not sow.
But grain shed by the harvest of the previous year, and escaping
the appetites of the birds, actually produced, after another over-
flow of the river, a self-sown harvest of 72 sacks; i.e. the farmer,
with one sowing and one ploughing, reaped in two years, from J
sack of seed 129 sacks of corn ! 516 fold ! This is vouched for
by several persons.^

^ A Father in God: W. W. Jones, Archbishop of Capetovm, 93.

90 SOWING IN TEARS, REAPING IN JOY

2. The spiritual harvest is assured to us on the same authority
as assures the earthly harvest. He who has never broken His
first promise, " seedtime and harvest shall not cease," will never
break His second, "they that sow in tears shall reap in joy."
There is no joy like that which comes from successful work for
Christ. All the joys of earth are nothing when compared with
this. This endures; this allies us to angels and God. This
awakens the purest and noblest instincts of the soul. In this joy
we feel the throb of Christ's heart. The promise to Him is that
"he shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied."
This joy is mingled even with the gloom of Gethsemane and
Calvary. It was for the joy set before Him that He endured the
cross and despised the shame.

^ Most of the thoughts that cluster round the season of
autumn are worn and common enough. No new ones can be
spoken ; we can only vary the key of the old. So when we think
of harvest time, and of life's harvest being similar to it, we think
a well-worn thought ; but its very worn condition makes it dear,
for it has been the constant thought of all our brother men. It
is bound up with a thousand lovely poems in which the thoughts
of solitary men took form, with a thousand lovely landscapes
in which, by vintage and by cornland, human energy and human
joy, the long day's labour and the moonlight dance were wrought
together into happiness. Few sights are fairer than that seen
autumn after autumn round many an English homestead, when,
as evening falls, the wains stand laden among the golden stubble,
and the gleaners are scattered over the misty field ; when men
and women cluster round the gathered sheaves and rejoice in the
loving-kindness of the earth ; when in the dewy air the shouts of
happy people ring, and all over the broad moon shines down to
bless with its yellow light the same old recurring scene it has
looked on and loved for so many thousand years.^

3. " They that sow shall reap." The seed is God's, and God's
too is the increase ; only let us cast God's seed into God's soil,
it matters not though we sow in tears, He will bless us with the
harvest. God has His purpose in every call of duty ; His purpose
is to give us the blessedness of what we do. Were the work ours
alone, were we left to do it by ourselves, were success dependent
on our efforts or skill, then as we think how imperfect we are,
1 Stopford A. Brooke,

PSALM cxxvi. 6 91

and as we contemplate the powerful influences at work to hinder
and mar the cause which we have at heart, we might well despair.
But the word of the Lord standeth sure ; God's promise cannot
fail of fulfilment. The "shall come again" of the Omnipotent
absolutely ensures success. Only sow faithfully, and you shall
reap abundantly — here, if God sees it wise and well, hereafter,
beyond all question. Yes, the harvest will come, must come.
There may be cloudy skies, and dark days, and cold winds first —
much that makes the sower anxious, and even causes weeping and
painful fear; but still, the harvest will come.

^ Every promise of God hath this tacitly annexed to it — " Is
anything too hard for the Lord ? " ^

^ The Methodist Chapel at Shotley Bridge, of which Mr.
M'CuUagh became minister in 1849, was the only place of
worship in this small village. One very in^resting member of
the congregation, a most godly woman, was the sister of that
brilliant man of letters, De Quincey, the English opium-eater. A
local preacher of much originality was also a prominent figure in
the congregation. Mr. M'Cullagh in after years wrote of him :
" Henderson's prayers were sometimes remarkable. Once I heard
him quote the passage, 'The promise is unto you and to your
children,' thus, ' The promise is unto Henderson and his children.'
Some years afterwards I met one of his children in the ranks of
the ministry, and I thought of the good man's faith in wedging his
own name and his children's into the promise. Once when I was
preaching on the text, 'Whereby are given unto us exceeding,
great and precious promises,' as I quoted one promise after
another, Henderson half -audibly said, ' That is mine ! and that is
mine ! and that is mine ! ' And when I uttered the words,
'Having nothing, and yet possessing all things,' he said with
added emphasis, ' and that is mine.' " ^

* John Owen. " Thomas M'CuUagh, by his Eldest Son, 62.

The Gtifts of Sleep.

9?

Literature.

Banks (L. A.), The Great Promises of the Bible, 87.

Bell (C. D.), The Name above every Name, 232,

Boyd (A. K. H.), Tloe Graver Thoughts of a Country Pa/rson, i. {^4.

Bryce (W. K.), Appeals to the Soul, 60.

Burns (D.), The Song of the Well, 77.

Christopherson (H.), Sermons, 43.

Jerdan (C), Messages to the Children, 193.

Lefroy (E. C), The Christian Ideal, 92.

McFadyen (.J. E.), The Divine Pursuit, 83.

Martin (A.), Winning the Soul, 65.

Matheson (G.), Searchings in the Silence, 101.

„ „ Rests by the River, 198.

Miller (J. R.), A Help for the Common Days, 247.
Morrison (G. H.), The Wings of the Morning, 24.
Purves (P. C), The Divine Cure for Heart Trouble, 295.
Speirs (E. B.), A Present Advent, 276.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, i. (1855), No. 12.
Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 205 (C. L. Ooghlan).

94

The Gifts of Sleep.

So he gireth unto his beloved sleep.— Ps. cxxvii. 2.

This is a psalm of prosperity, and of how it comes. It is sung in
the ear of those who boast themselves as able to command success.
They have, to begin with, the common ambition to rear a home,
to keep it safe, and to fill it with plenty. Since, however, they
do not ask these things of God, they cannot be sure of them. If
God does not work with them, their own labour will be lost.
They may toil at the walls and find that the rain or the wind
foils them. They may build on a peopled hill, and take turns to
man the ramparts, and yet, by stealth or force, the city may be
taken and their home wrecked. They may be up before dawn,
and be busy until the light fails, only to sit down to a table where
the very bread seems made of the pains by which it was earned.
For nothing they have made themselves so anxious that they
could not sleep when they would.

As a pendant to that bustling scene, we have this picture of
peace. The figure is that of the man who cares only to do God's
will and trusts God to work by him and for him. He lies under
a canopy of Love Divine, with closed eyes, calm face, and restful
hands. As we look, we seem to know that these sheltering walls
are God-built ; and that this peace is God-kept ; and that God,
with the morn, shall spread the table, and call His guest. All
that the sleepless pant after, this man has, and he has his sleep
too, both full and sound. " So " — by God Himself being builder,
keeper, host — " he giveth unto his beloved sleep."

^ Mrs. Browning has told us that there was no verse in the
Book of Psalms which fell upon her ear with such comfort as
this —

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,

95

96 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this —
" He giveth His beloved, sleep " ?

The text yields three shades of meaning. In the one precious
gift of sleep, there are really three givings — -
I. The Giving of Sleep,
II. The Giving in Sleep.
III. The Giving by Sleep.

The Giving of Sleep.

1. "He giveth unto his beloved sleep." The persons to whom
this language must be taken to be addressed are the builders and
the watchmen of the foregoing verse. For them God provided the
gift of sleep. And the harder the building in the daytime, and
the keener the watching while the sentry goes his round, the
more certain is the man to value the blessing of slumber when
God, in love, gives it to him. No doubt, " the sleep of the
labouring man is sweet," But, if it be only genuine sleep, the
boon is far richer when it comes after care than when it comes
only after muscular fatigue. We all know how natural are the
cries for sleep which Henry rv, is represented as pouring out
when he contrasts the lighter woes of the poor, allowing the gift
to come, with the heavier anxieties he endured, banishing it from
his pillow.

^ This is what Sancho Panza — the little Spanish peasant with
the short legs who acted as squire to Don Quixote — said about
sleep. Sancho's words were : " Now blessings light on him who
first invented sleep ! It covers a man all over, thoughts and all,
like a cloak ; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat
for the cold, and cold for the hot." ^

^ I cannot help my heart feeling heavy, I wonder during
how many years of my life bed has been the one haven and longed-
for forgetfulness of care. I do not mean that I have not hud
much, very much, that I am grateful for, of mere human pleasant-
' C. Jordan, Messages to the Children, 195.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 97

ness, but that, on the whole, the cares of the day have outweighed
the joys and made one glad of bed as an escape. Truly, bed is a
wonderful haven, and I do thank God for having given me through
so many years sleep. " He giveth his beloved sleep " ; may it
not be in this lower sense as well as in the higher ? I would fain
think so ; at least, I know His gift of sleep has been nothing less
than a gift of life to me.^

^ I sat up alone; two or three times I paid a visit to the
children's room. It seemed to me, young mothers, that I under-
stood you ! — Sleep is the mystery of life ; there is a profound
charm in this darkness broken by the tranquil light of the night-
lamp, and in this silence measured by the rhythmic breathings of
two young sleeping creatures. It was brought home to me that I
was looking on at a marvellous operation of nature, and I watched
it in no profane spirit. I sat silently listening, a moved and
hushed spectator of this poetry of the cradle, this ancient and ever
new benediction of the family, this symbol of creation sleeping under
the wing of God, of our consciousness withdrawing into the shade
that it may rest from the burden of thought, and of the tomb, that
Divine bed, where the soul in its turn rests from life. To sleep is
to strain and purify our emotions, to deposit the mud of life, to
calm the fever of the soul, to return into the bosom of maternal
nature, thence to re-issue, healed and strong. Sleep is a sort of
innocence and purification. Blessed be He who gave it to the poor
sons of men as the sure and faithful companion of life, our daily
healer and consoler.^

When to soft sleep we give ourselves away,

And in a dream as in a fairy bark

Drift on and on through the enchanted dark

To purple daybreak — little thought we pay

To that sweet better world we know by day.

We are clean quit of it, as is a lark

So high in heaven no human eye can mark

The thin swift pinion cleaving through the gray.

Till we awake ill fate can do no ill.

The resting heart shall not take up again

The heavy load that yet must make it bleed;

For this brief space the loud world's voice is still,

No faintest echo of it brings us pain.

How will it be when we shall sleep indeed ? '

^ Life and Letters of Edward Hiring, ii. 29.
^ Amiel's Journal (trans, by Mrs. Humphry Ward), 38.
^ Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — ^

98 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

2. Sleep, gift of love and more than golden, is but a word to
stand for a rest yet sweeter and deeper. The blessing that drops
as from the hovering hands of God upon the wearied frame is but
the Amen to the better blessing breathed by the Spirit of God
into the spirit of man. First He giveth His beloved peace of
heart, and then comes the sign of it in the slumbering nerve and
limb. This inner hush and rest is God's own gift and His dearest
love-token. Well do we know that it is no easy boon from His
overflowing hand. It is no less than the gift of Himself. He
gave Himself to live in our nature and to be for ever one with us
and one of us. He gave Himself to do our part and bear our curse.
He is ceaselessly giving Himself to us in ruling our lot and touch-
ing our heart. Jesus gives each of us the privilege of John, and
we are wooed to lie back on His breast and lose ourselves in Him.
The moment we do so, His peace flows from His heart to our heart.
He giveth His beloved sleep.

Peace within makes peace without. Where there is no dis-
turbance in the heart, there can be none in the billows, there can
be none in the storm. These may wanton furiously. Their wild
sport may threaten shipwreck to the vessel. But God's sleep can
exist amid them. It can hold in sweet oblivion the untroubled
soul. And herein lies its chiefest virtue, its most refreshing use.
Among storms and billows it is that the righteous man obtains the
full blessedness of sleep. He cannot escape the troubles of life ;
they are part of the heritage of humanity. He is not exempt
from business cares. He can claim no immunity from disaster
and defeat. But in all perplexities and all distresses he enjoys
the inestimable blessing of a quiet conscience at peace with man,
at peace with God. And this will give him rest, refreshment,
repose. After the longest and weariest day, he can lie down and
lose all painful recollections in the untroubled atmosphere of
sleep. For weary heads and aching hearts there is no remedy
like this.

^ How beautifully has the sleep of one at peace with God been
represented in a well-known modern picture. The amphitheatre
is crowded by a fierce and eager throng ; tier after tier is lined
with the cruel faces of those who have come there to see the
Christian martyr torn to pieces by savage beasts. The arena is
prepared. The hungry tiger leaps with impatient roar at the bars

PSALM cxxvii. 2 99

of his cage, thirsting for blood. A slave pushes back the doors of
the cell where lies the man doomed to death for his adherence to
Christ, that he may come forth, and with his dying agonies make
sport for the emperor, his court and the people. And what do
you see there, as the door opens, and the cell of the martyr is
disclosed ? A youth sleeping peacefully, with the symbol of his
faith clasped to his heart, and heaven's own sunshine resting on
his face ; for all is well between him and God. The death which
he knew last night was to be met to-day has no terrors for him ;
he has made it " Christ to live," and shall find it " gain to die."
Looking on that scene, we have a comment on the inspired verse,
" Even so he giveth unto his beloved sleep." ^

^ Eemember the last moments of a noble Scottish Covenanter,
the Earl of Argyle — son of the Great Marquis — who was beheaded
in 1685. An officer of State came to see him an hour before his
execution, and found that he was taking his usual after-dinner
sleep. The officer rushed home in a highly excited state, exclaim-
ing, " Argyle within an hour of eternity, and sleeping as pleasantly
as a child! "2

3. For the enjoyment of this deeper gift, as of the nightly rest,
we must put ourselves in the way of it. We have to prepare a
welcome for it. We have to let ourselves sleep. We cease from
self; we resign responsibility for ourselves; we pass into God's
hands. We are content to do His will and to wait His will. We
are sure that His will, whatever it may be, is our true good. We
trust a love and wisdom and might infinitely better than our own.
Hence a peace that passeth all understanding — no care, no fear,
no duty too hard, no trial too sore, death no longer a foe and
judgment a welcome ! Even God — the Giving God — could give
His beloved no more ; for bliss itself shall be but this same peace
free from all dispeace and made fully aware of itself.

•[j Martyrs, confessors, and saints have tasted this rest, and
counted themselves happy in that they endured. A countless
host of God's faithful servants have drunk deeply of it amid the
daily burden of a weary life — dull, commonplace, painful, or
desolate. All that God has been to them, He is ready to be to
you ; He only asks that you should seek no other rest save in
Him. It is a rest which has never failed those who honestly
sought it. The heart once fairly given to God, with a clear

^ Canon Bell, The Name above every Name, 237.
' C. Jerdan, Messages to the Children, 198.

loo THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

conscience, a fitting rule of life, and a steadfast purpose of
obedience, you will find a wonderful sense of rest coming over
you. What once fretted you ceases to do so ; former unworthy
exciting pleasures cease to attract you. No miser ever so feared
to lose his treasure as the faithful soul fears to lose this rest
when once tasted. Such words may seem exaggeration to those
who have not tried it ; but the saints will tell you otherwise. St,
Paul will tell you of a peace which passeth understanding ; Jesus
Christ tells you of His peace which the world can neither give
nor take away, because it is God's gift only. Such peace may
undergo many an assault, but it will but be confirmed thereby,
and rise above all that would trouble it. He who has tasted it
would not give it in exchange for all this life can give ; and death
is to him a passage from this rest to that of eternity.^

11.

Giving in Sleep.

There cannot be the slightest doubt that the English equiva-
lent for the Hebrew words is, "He giveth to His beloved in
sleep." "He giveth blessing to His beloved during sleep." If
the words so rendered are less perfect rhythmically, and suggest
a less beautiful meaning or no meaning at all, we cannot help it.
Some may think that this is almost a wanton and needless inter-
ference with a verse rendered sacred by long association; but
when we consider that it really is the deepest line in the poem,
the line which sums up and expresses the central thought of the
poet, that where it stands it is a highly original thought, a
genuine poetic flash, and that the old rendering of it robs it of its
freshness and makes it very commonplace, we feel bound to make
a little sacrifice of association and soothing sound in the interest
of truth and fact.

The theme of the Psalmist is that, apart from the Divine
blessing and working, all human effort is vain. By his own
unaided efforts man can effect nothing. Even in such a matter
as the building of a house, where, apparently, the hands of man
accomplish everything and God is not in evidence at all, it is
really God who builds. He has supplied the material. He has
* Jean Nicolas Grou, The Hidden Life of the Soul.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 101

supplied the mind and the strength by which the material is
shaped and put in its place. The watchers on the walls of the
city may be never so vigilant and active, and everything may seem
to depend on their wakefulness and care ; but unless God watches
with them and through them, their vigilance will avail nothing.

Moreover, God works when men do not work at all. He
blesses and prospers them without effort of their own. The
builders go home after a hard day's toil and, laying themselves
down to rest, get fresh strength for their work; and God, by
giving them sleep, is really building the house. The guards on
the city wall retire in turn and betake themselves to repose, and
God by this gift of sleep is Himself watching all the while. He
blesses all who love Him when they know it not. He blesses us
and furthers the work of spiritual life while we work not, blesses
us silently, as if in the watches of the night, when we are all
unconscious of it. Yes, He giveth to His beloved in sleep.

f The whole thought has a certain kinship with the teaching
of our Lord when He says, " Be not anxious for the morrow.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." God blesses
them, as it were, without effort of their own ; they, as it were,
dream through life. They are silent, receptive; He gives them
beauty in their flower-sleep. Or perhaps it comes still closer to
our Lord's beautiful parable of the silent, unseen, unconscious
growth of the spiritual life, both in the soul of man and in the
spread of His Kingdom in the world : " And he said. So is the
kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground ;
and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should
spring and grow up, he knoweth not how." ^

1. God's secret ministry is patent in our infancy. The little
child is yet, so to say, asleep. His conscious environment is a
very tiny and a very dreamy one. His heaven, as some one has
said, " is only three feet high ! " The familiar cares that are
lying upon the hearts of those about him mean nothing for him ;
still less is he awake to the greater life that is passing out of
doors. And that is as it should be. We would feel it unnatural
if he understood too much of what went on about him. The
* E. B. Speirs, A Present Advent, 280.

102 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

things that occupy his elders' minds, the work of which their
hands are full, ought to have no concern for him. It is right
that he should be unconscious of all that. Watchers by a bedside
may settle great affairs while the sleeper does not stir. And so,
pillowed on innocence, the little child should be all unaware of
the life that plays around it; so far as this goes, it should be
asleep. All the while stooping over it there is a mother's love,
and all the splendour of a mother's patience. Shielding it there
is a father's strength, and to provide for all it needs, a father's
labour. And it is clad, and fed with food convenient, and cradled
to rest, and sheltered from the storm. And should it ail, the best
skill in the city is urgently summoned to the tiny sufferer. What
a wealth of love and of love's care is here, yet who more passive
than that little infant ! Have these small hands helped in the
preparation ? Has that new heart done any of the planning ?
Helpless it lies, and doomed to certain death, if life depended on
its puny efforts. But God " giveth unto his beloved sleep."

^ We cannot underrate the enormous importance of discipline
and training in childhood and youth, nor the enormous importance
of teaching children to help themselves; but how much of the
influence which goes to mould our human nature in its early days,
and to build it up, is of the silent sort — subtle influences from
nature with which children have an inborn kinship; subtle
influences from the impalpable atmosphere of home — nay,
whisperings to the child's soul, we know not from whence ; voices
coming to them in their pure slumbers while they are still in the
temple of first intuitions and innocence, and have not yet gone
out to mingle in the deafening din of the busy world ? " Samuel,
Samuel": and Samuel, knowing not who calls, answered in his
dreams, " Here am I." ^

^ You cast an acorn into the ground and for a time it lies
as dead. But nature's hidden ministries gather round it. The
humours of the earth begin to soften its dry husk; the gentle
rain sets the sap aflowing ; heaven's sunshine tempts the tender
shoot above the ground ; and by-and-by a noble tree stands there,
tossing its arms in defiance of the tempest through a thousand
winters. And the roots of all true life and character are planted
as deep as this, and nourished in ways as subtle and unknown.
Long before men are alive to His presence with them in their life,
long before they have learned to resist temptation and to cultivate

* E. B. Speirs, A Present Advent, 285.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 103

the love of His will, long before they know to choose the good and
refuse the evil, God has begun His wonderful ministry to their
souls. Already His good Spirit is putting the seed of a true man-
hood in them, and straightway it springeth and groweth up, a man
knoweth not how. So in the opening of their days He may bless
His children while they reck not of it — giving to them, so to say,
in sleep.^

2. The same gracious ministry accompanies us in our pursuit
of happiness. If anywhere in life, it is just there that it is vain
to rise up early and to sit up late. Not when we are determined,
come what may, to have a pleasant and a happy life ; not then, as
the reward of that insistence, does God bestow the music of the
heart. He gives us when there is forgetfulness of self, and the
struggle to be true to what is highest, though the morning break
without a glimpse of blue, and the path be through the valley of
the shadow. The one sure way to miss the gift of happiness is to
rise early and to sit up late for it. To be bent at every cost on a
good time is the sure harbinger of dreary days. It is when we
have the courage to forget all that, and to lift up our hearts to
do the will of God, that, like a swallow flashing from the eaves,
happiness glances out with glad surprise.

^ In spite of his depressed condition, John Stuart Mill was
able to do his usual work at the India Office. But it was done
mechanically. He felt no interest in it. Melancholy ruled him.
He began to ask whether life was worth living on such terms.
" I generally answered to myself," he says, " that I did not think
I could possibly bear it beyond a year." At length relief came
to him. It came in a curious way. He was reading some
biography, in which the pathos of an incident in the story so
overcame him that he gave way to tears. The discovery that
emotion was still within him, and that he had the power to feel
for others, was salvation to him. " From this moment my burden
grew lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling was
dead within me was gone. I was no longer hopeless. I was not
a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of the material
out of which all worth of character, and all capacity for happiness,
are made." His old interests now revived. The cloud which had
so darkened his life withdrew, and existence became to him once
again pleasant and useful. He still believed that " happiness is
the test of all rules of conduct," but he had learned that " this

^ A. Martin, Winning the Soul, 69.

104 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

end was to be attained only by not making it the direct end.
Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object
other than their own happiness ; on the happiness of others, on
the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit,
followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus
at something else, they find happiness by the way." ^

3. All through our life God's secret ministry is at work, and
we owe much to it when we are called to lift the burden off our
shoulders and rest a little. Less or more these grateful interrup-
tions of our toil occur in the lives of all men, and, living at the
pressure most of us do, they are as necessary as they are welcome.
And it would be a pity if any one failed to reap from such a season
the full benefit it was meant to bring him. Leisure is a good gift,
and to be used wisely ; and for leisure also we shall give account.
Therefore let a man use it even earnestly if he will. Let him
take advantage of it to pass his life's affairs heedfully in review.
Let him ask how things stand with him in God's sight. Let him
examine carefully his works and ways, and mend his plans for the
future. But let him not forget the wisdom of " a wise passive-
ness." Besides this conscious rearrangement of the life with all
its interests and duties there is another benefit conceivable.
Simply to have escaped from the crush and din of the life we
have been living, and to breathe a freer, calmer atmosphere — this
alone may mean much for us. While the mind lies fallow it may
gather to itself fresh life and power. The finest invigoration of
the soul's whole faculties may come to it in the profoundest rest.
For God blesses His beloved while they sleep.

^ The sect called the Quietists, who flourished in the seven-
teenth century, and who taught that God came closest to the soul
when it simply waited for Him, and did not actively search for
Him, may have too exclusively chosen the Psalmist's line for
their motto, and its spirit as their guide in the religious life.
But there is a sense in which we must all be Quietists, and rest
from thinking and working that God may come to us in our
dreams. To cherish such a belief, to feel that everything does
not depend on us, far from being a hindrance to work, a tempta-
tion to spiritual idleness, is just the one thing which can enable
us to do our work efficiently, because it enables us to do it
without worry and over-anxiety.^
^ H. Lewis, Modem RcUimalism, 103. * E. B. Speirs, A Present Advent, 290.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 105

^ God gives to many of us in our waking state, but not to the
highest, not to the best beloved. Talent is got by waking, but
not genius. Genius is like the nightingale — unconscious of the
beauty of its own song. Even so is there a genius of the spirit.
There are souls that win their virtue in the school of stern experi-
ence ; God gives to them in waking. But there are others, like
the garden of Eden, who need not a man to till the ground.
They yield their fruit spontaneously. They are beautiful, not
because they ought, but because they must. They can no more
help being kind than the bee can help making its hive. They are
not under the law, but under grace, and so they do everything,
not legally, but gracefully. The flowers of their hearts are wild
flowers ; God alone has tended them ; they have bloomed in the
light of His smile ; they have called no man master. These are
they to whom the Father giveth in sleep.^

III.

Giving by Sleep.

1. A Godlike boon it is that frees us from our drudgery, heals
our weariness, lifts our anxiety, and blinds us to the morrow. It
is a blessed thing to be thus saved, even for a little while, from
ourselves. But the night draws to dawn, and the gift of sleep is
spent, and the old life claims the man anew. Now is it that he
finds the gifts which God brings by sleep. He faces life with
these in hand, and faces it therefore with new courage and
vigour. His body has been strengthened, his mind cleared, his
heart nerved, his will re-strung.

Wonderful is the work of repair in life that goes on while we
sleep. Men bring the great ships to dock after they have
ploughed the waves or battled with the storms and are battered
and strained and damaged, and there they are repaired and made
ready to go to sea again. At night our jaded and exhausted
bodies are dry-docked after the day's conflict and toils, and while
we sleep the mysterious process of restoration and reinvigoration
goes on ; and when morning comes we are ready to begin a new
day of toil and care. We lie down tired, feeling sometimes that
we can never do another day's work; but the morning comes

^ G. Matheson, Searehings in the Silence, 101,

io6 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

again, and we rise renewed in body and spirit, full of enthusiasm,
and strong and brave for the hardest duties.

^ The author of The Mystery of Sleep, Dr. John Bigelow, is not
satisfied with the ordinary answer, that we sleep in order that we
may rest and repair the waste tissues. He does not believe that
that is a satisfactory answer to the question as to why we are
compelled to sleep one hour out of three, eight hours out of every
twenty-four, four months out of every year, and twenty-three
years out of every threescore years and ten. He seriously assails
this position by asserting that we do not rest when we sleep in
any sense in which we do not rest when awake. He pertinently
asks: "What faculty of the spiritual or the physical nature of
man is in repose during sleep ? What single function or energy
of the body is then absolutely suspended ? Certainly not our
hearts, which do not enjoy a moment's rest from the hour of our
birth to our decease. The heart is always engaged in the effort
to send our blood, latent with vital energy, through every vein,
artery, and tissue of our bodies." And so he goes on, taking up
various organs of the human frame, and shows that nothing rests
while we sleep.

He goes on to say that the great purpose of sleep is to dis-
sociate us periodically from the world in which we live, and in
a sense to regenerate us morally and spiritually. To his mind,
we have in sleep conditions which are in harmony with one of the
supreme behests of a Christian life — utter deliverance from the
domination of the phenomenal world; entire emancipation, for
these few sleeping hours, from the cares and ambitions of the life
into which we were born, and to the indulgence of which we are
inclined by nature to surrender the service of all our vital
energies. If it be a good thing to live above the world, to regard
our earthly life as transitory, as designed to educate us for a more
elevated existence, to serve us as a means, not an end, then we
have in sleep, apparently, an ally and coadjutor — at least, to the
extent of delivering us for several hours every day from a servile
dependence upon what ought to be a good slave, but is always
a bad master.^

2. Gifts of spiritual illumination and direction have come
through sleep. When God shuts the doors of sense, He keeps
open His own way into the spirit ; and many a time He gives His
beloved thoughts of truth and desires for good that surprise the
sleeper when he gets himself back again. He awakes to earth as
» L. A. Banks, The Oreat Promises (tf the Bible, 88.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 107

one come from heaven, with the life of heaven still pulsing in his
heart. How plain his duty is ! how sure his help ! how bright
his hope ! Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in it God gave
him a vision of what we often desire, that of the future ; he told
him that four hundred years hence the people of Israel would
come out of Egypt and march in triumph to the Promised Land.
Jacob, when he ran away from home, lay down to sleep, putting
a stone beneath his head for a pillow, and as he lay there he
dreamed of heaven. A ladder of light came down from the
Throne of God, and on it angels ascending and descending ; what
a delightful experience in sleep, a vision of Heaven, a sight of
Home. But there is still more in the vision ; the ladder is a
beautiful type of Jesus Christ. He has been let down from God's
Throne, so that men may reach the feet of their Father in Heaven.

^ There is an advice of my old mother's which I have
often acted upon, and I pass it on to you: "Before doing an
action which may mean, by-and-by, a great crisis, sleep on it for
a night or two. Do not act at once, or you may be foolish.
After a good sleep, at least a man's nerves are steady and his
brain and mind are well-balanced." God gives these to men in
their sleep.^

The hours of day are like the waves
That fret against the shores of sin:
They touch the human everywhere.
The bright-divine fades in their glare,

And God's sweet voice the spirit craves
Is heard too faintly in the din.

When all the senses are awake,
The mortal presses overmuch
Upon the great immortal part.
And God seems farther from the heart.

Must souls, like skies when day-dawns break,
Lose star by star at sunlight's touch ?

But when the sun kneels in the west
And gradually sinks as great hearts sink,
And in his sinking flings adown
Bright blessings from his fading crown,
The stars begin their song of rest

And shadows make the thoughtless think.
* W. K. Bryce, Appeals to the Soul, 68.

io8 THE GIFTS OF SLEEP

The human seems to fade away,

And down the starred and shadowed skies
The heavenly comes, as memories come
Of home to hearts afar from home,

And through the darkness after day
Many a winged angel flies.

And somehow, tho' the eyes see less,
Our spirits seem to see the more;

When we look thro' night's shadow-bars,
The soul sees more than shining stars —

Yea, sees the very loveliness

That rests upon the golden shore.^

3. By a last sleep God leads His beloved to a perfect life and
an endless day. Death is the sinking of the wearied man into
the lap of Nature that she may soothe and refresh him. It is the
draught that relaxes the strained energies, and smoothes the brow
of care, and cools the fever of the heart ; and from its gentle sway
the man emerges with his powers refitted and rebraced for the
toil and endeavours of his life. And what is Death but this ? It
is a sleep, no more ; a sleep in which earth's weariness is drowned
for ever and care and sorrow sink into perpetual oblivion and the
whole nature is finally recruited and refreshed for unending
service elsewhere.

^ After forty years of indefatigable toil, Huxley retired to his
home at Eastbourne on the cliffs of England's southern coasts,
still to breast the storms and enjoy the love and confidence of
friends and foes, who, however much they agreed with or differed
from him, gave him their united and hearty esteem. He died on
June 29, 1895. His gravestone bears these significant and touch-
ing lines written by his wife :

Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep:
For still He giveth His beloved sleep:
And if an endless sleep He wills.
So best.

This is beautiful resignation; but we believe that He who
giveth His beloved sleep will assign to him eternal rest from
earthly misgiving and fear, and also an appropriate sphere of
future activity. Surely an existence so nobly filled with higher

' Father Ryan.

PSALM cxxvii. 2 109

forms of human effort cannot be doomed to the extinction of end-
less sleep ! ^

Out yonder in the moonlight, wherein God's Acre lies,
Go angels walking to and fro, singing their lullabies.
Their radiant wings are folded, and their eyes are bended low,
As they sing among the beds whereon the flowers delight to
grow —

" Sleep, oh, sleep !

The Shepherd guardeth His sheep.
Fast speedeth the night away,
Soon Cometh the glorious day;
Sleep, weary ones, while ye may,—

Sleep, oh, sleep ! "

The flowers within God's Acre see that fair and wondrous

sight,
And hear the angels singing to the sleepers through the

night ;
And, lo ! throughout the hours of day those gentle flowers

prolong
The music of the angels in that tender slumber-song, —

" Sleep, oh, sleep !

The Shepherd loveth His sheep.
He that guardeth His flock the best
Hath folded them to His loving breast;
So sleep ye now, and take your rest, —

Sleep, oh, sleep ! "

From angel and from flower the years have learned that

soothing song.
And with its heavenly music speed the days and nights along;
So through all time, whose flight the Shepherd's vigils glorify,
God's Acre slumbereth in the grace of that sweet lullaby, —

"Sleep, oh, sleep!

The Shepherd loveth His sheep.
Fast speedeth the night away.
Soon Cometh the glorious day;
Sleep, weary ones, while ye may, —

Sleep, oh, sleep ! " ^

* S. p. Cadman, Charles Darwin, and Other English Thinkers, 86.
' Eugene Field, Second Book of Verse, 25.

De Profundis.

kn

Literature,

Brown (C), The Message of God, 216.

Church (R. W.), Pascal and Other Sermons, 1.

Dearden (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, 14.

Hunter (J.), De Profundis Glamavi, 1.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 17.

Lonsdale (J.), Sermons, 152.

Purvea (Q. T.), Faith and Life, 323.

Travers (H.), The Garden of Voices, 94.

Vaughan(J.), Set-mons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xvi. (1878), No. 1078.

Christian World Pulpit, 1. 177 (H. D. Rawnsley) ; Ixxi. 346 (R. B.

Tweddell).
Churchman's Pulpit : Ash Wednesday, v. 269 (W. W. Battershall).

De Profundis.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.— Ps. cxxx. i.

1. This psalm belongs to the group of fifteen psalms called Psalms
of Ascents or Goings up. It is a Psalter within the Psalter, and
may possibly have originally formed a separate hymn-book.
When these fifteen psalms — cxx.-cxxxiv. inclusive — were written
we know not ; but they have about them the breath of the exile
in a foreign land, who from the long levels of his alien home saw
far off in fancy the hills of his beloved fatherland ; or nearer, in
his going up from his captivity, beheld once more the snow-
capped heights of Hermon to the north, or the grey, stony hills
stand round about Jerusalem, as the mercy of God stood round
about His people. Those who in imagination go back to the time
when the singers took their harps from the willow-trees by
Euphrates' side, and tuned them to these tender hymns, may
hear as they read them how in some far warrior chieftain's tent,
" upon the frosty Caucasus," the exile who has long time " dwelt
among those that are enemies unto peace," chants sadly enough,
" Woe is me, that I am constrained to dwell in Meshech and have
my habitation among the tents of Kedar " ; or may catch the cry
of hope and triumph of the fugitive band, as they see the sun rise
over the purple hills that bound the parched deserts or the moon-
light wastes they have left behind.

^ This was one of the favourite psalms of Luther — one he
paraphrased and had set to music ; in it, he said he saw the gate
of heaven opening wide to him. His paraphrase of it became one
of the favourite hymns of the German Eeformers. And the song
returned into Luther's own heart. During the Augsburg Diet,
when he was at the Castle of Coburg, and had to suffer much
from inward and outward trials, he fell into a swoon. On awak-
ing from it, he said, " Come and let us, in defiance of the devil,
sing the Psalm, * Lord, from the depths to thee I cry.' Let us
sing it in full chorus and extol and praise God," Being asked

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 8

114 DE PROFUNDIS

on one occasion which were the best Psalms, he replied, "The
Pauline Psalms" (Psalmi Paulini), and being pressed to say
which they were, he answered : " The 32nd, the 51st, the 130th,
and the 143rd. For they teach us that the forgiveness of sins is
vouchsafed to them that believe without the law and without
works ; therefore are they Pauline Psalms ; and when David
sings, ' With thee is forgiveness, that thou mayest be feared,' so
Paul likewise saith, 'God hath concluded all under sin that
he may have mercy on all.' Therefore none can boast of his
own righteousness, but the words, ' That thou mayest be feared,'
thrust away all self-merit, teach us to take off our hat before God
and confess, gratia est, non meritum, remissio non satisf actio — ' it is
all forgiveness, and no merit.' "

I.

In the Depths.

1. Our human nature and human life have their depths, and
not in anything are they less understood than in the depths which
belong to them. Their superficial aspects are for ever hiding from
us their deeper realities. What calls itself knowledge of men —
acquaintance with their ordinary thoughts, passions, motives, and
ways, with their various humours, caprices, follies, and weaknesses
— is not knowledge of man, of the inner and real man which the
outer man as often conceals as reveals.

We speak at times of "a shallow man." But is there any
such man anywhere ? There are only too many men everywhere
who are living on the surface of their nature, keenly alive to their
earth-born wants and to the capacities of human existence for
work and pleasure, men whose days are largely the record of mean
ambitions and strivings. But to judge by appearances is nearly
always misleading. The acutest judges of character are often at
fault, and none go more frequently and lamentably astray in their
reckoning than those who boast most confidently of their know-
ledge of men. In the so-called shallow man we may perceive, if
we look intently and sympathetically enough, what is not shallow,
and find, especially in those revealing hours when the tragic forces
of existence sweep into his life, some suggestion of the latent
power which needs the fiery storm to throw it up to the surface.

PSALM cxxx. I 115

We are often only passing judgment upon ourselves, upon our
want of thought, imagination, and insight, when we proclaim our
fellows to be lacking in those elements to which the great and
deep things of life make their appeal. In the circle in which we
live and move there would be many rich discoveries for any one
with fine imaginative power, skilled to see into

The depths of human souls —

Souls that appear to have no depth at all

To careless eyes.

^ There is a well-known poem by Matthew Arnold entitled
"The Buried Life" — a poem full of haunting music and rare
introspective power. It is a picture of many a soul, and it is not
difficult to fill in from experience the outline which it supplies.
We all have the power of living so completely upon the surface of
our souls as to be ignorant of what is hidden in their depths. It
is, indeed, a large part of the pathos and tragedy of life that we
are so disobedient to the oracle which bids us know ourselves.
We either do not care for self-knowledge, or imagine we have it
in such abundance that we can swear by it at times — " as well as
I know myself ! " But there are moments when we have glimpses
of what we are and may be, of hitherto unknown capacities and
powers, and from beneath our conscious life there rise the
murmuring voices of a deeper — a buried life.

Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,

From the soul's subterranean depth upborne

As from an infinitely distant land,

Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey

A melancholy into all our day.

A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain.*

2. Perhaps the Psalmist personifies the nation. The later days
of Israel's history were days of storm and stress. The golden age
of national prosperity had passed away. Storm after storm had
swept over the nation. The great Powers of the East had arisen.
They felt their strength, and the little exclusive Israelitish nation
was their constant and ready prey. Assyria, Babylonia, Persia,
Egypt arose in their might. Part of the nation was dispersed and
^ J. Hunter, De Profundis Clamavi, 3.

ii6 DE PROFUNDIS

disappeared, and part of it was carried away. Those who returned
after the Exile were but a poor and broken remnant, still under
the dominion of their conquerors. We may hear in this pathetic
psalm the voice of the nation crying to the Lord out of the deep
waters of its distress. Its pride is humbled, its soul is brought
low even to the dust by the wholesome discipline of adversity.

^ We all remember those long, dark months at the beginning
of the South African War, when we were appalled by the news of
one reverse after another. There was the dread suspense, the
anxious waiting. In many a home the interest was a personal
one, and mothers and wives and children were in the depths of
apprehension for loved ones far away. In that dark experience
the nation betook itself to prayer and learnt to lift up its eyes to
One above, and found in Him a very present help and stay in
trouble.^

3. Whatever the original reference of the phrase " out of the
depths," it comes to us with a larger meaning than the writer
could apprehend. It is not an incident of life, it is life itself that
constitutes for us the deep out of which we cry. We of this
modern world have caught, as men never before have caught, a
sense of the mystery of life. Men have lost, perhaps for ever, the
art of unconscious objective living, the habit of looking upon life
as a child looks upon its mother, gratefully accepting her gifts and
asking no questions. We have well-nigh tortured all beauty and
joy out of life by our fierce, relentless probings. In return we
have captured here and there a fact, a force, a law, a glimpse of
the methods by which life fulfils itself. Our sciences and philo-
sophies have broadened our conceptions. To us life is a larger,
richer thing than to our fathers. But, after all, our deepest
questions are unanswered. There is no possibility of their answer.
What is life ? What is its purpose ? Whence did it come ?
Whither does it go ? Why am I here, living to-day a conscious,
sentient, thinking drop in the mighty torrent of life that pours
unceasingly from the exhaustless bosom of nature ? I am borne
on the flow of the torrent. Whence ? Wliither ? Wherefore ?
These are questions a man asks when he disengages himself from
the rush of the world and tries to find some meaning for his life.
It may be an unhealthy business ; but never were men so busy at

» R. B. Tweddell.

PSALM cxxx. I 117

it as now. The difficulty is that life echoes back our questions
unanswered. It refuses to explain itself. We are simply sub-
merged in the stream which flows through nature, as the planets
roll in their orbits, and the waves of light pulse through the ether.
What remains ? There remains the mystery which we call prayer,
almost as great a mystery as life itself.

^ God in His infinite mercy has placed us in those deeps of
wonder at life and death, of why and whither, deeps of intense
agony : " Wherefore hidest thou thy face ? " " Verily thou art a
God that hidest thyself." Deeps of intense joy : " Thou art about
my bed, and spiest out all my ways, there is not a thought in my
heart but thou knowest it altogether " ; and deeps of satisfaction
and quiet inward peace, which Wordsworth spoke of when he
said —

Enough, if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower.

We feel that we are greater than we know.^

4. There is a deeper mystery still — the mystery of sin. The
great religions of the world expressed in sacrifices and rituals of
atonement, often grotesque and horrible, their sense of moral
failure and guilt. The sense is rooted in the conscience, and it
has deepened as the life of the conscience has deepened. It finds
expression in the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. It sends out
a long, agonizing cry from the pages of St. Paul. The religion
whose elemental facts and implications he, more than any other
man, threw into architectonic form, disclosed the subtlety and
virulence of the taint which had fastened on human nature. In
giving to men a new sense of God, it gave them a new sense of
sin. All along its history, those who have climbed farthest up its
spiritual heights, its saints and heroes, have glanced with the most
shuddering fear down the spiritual chasms on whose verge they
trod.

^ The German naturalist, Blichner, in his book, Man in the
Past, the Present, and the Future, writes these profound words:
" It is only in man that the world becomes conscious to such a
degree that it rises out of its previous dream-like natural existence.

* H. D. Rawnsley.

iiS DE PROFUNDIS

Struggle therefore rages on the domain of morals as violently as
it formerly did on the physical field." And another German
scholar, Frauenstadt, in his Religion of Nature, writes : " In the
self-assertion of the flesh against the spirit I recognize sin ; and
since man is by nature subject to this tyranny of the flesh, it
follows that he is by nature sinful; and the sinful nature
propagating itself, there arises an original sinfulness." ^

^ The word sin implies the existence of something which
ought not to be where it is ; in using it, we set up an external
standard and condemn what fails to conform to it. The most
decisive argument against identifying sin with imperfection is the
verdict of the human consciousness itself. The consciousness of
sin as a positive malignant fact is most intense in the highest
natures. It is the saint, not the sinner, who says, " 0 wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? "
It was the Son of God Himself who, as Christians believe, gave
His life a ransom for sin, because no smaller price could destroy
its power.*

11.

The Cry Out of the Depths.

1. The cry for God is the natural utterance of the awakened
soul of man in every land and age — the cry of man whenever and
wherever he freely speaks out of the depths of his nature, an
aspiration which all history confesses. It may not always be an
intelligent or conscious cry, but a seeker after God man has
always been and must ever be, because from God he comes,
begotten, not made, and with a nature so constituted that only
in God can he find his full and final satisfaction and rest. The
surface of his life may often appear to say one thing, and its depths
quite another thing, but it is the cry from the depths that reveals
what he truly is and what he most needs. It is his inmost wants
and desires, not his hard, cold sense and keen understanding, that
read most rightly the secret of his life. It is not his real spiritual
needs that belong to the surface of his life, but only those poor
selfish cravings which are often mistaken for them by ill-
instructed minds. Outwardly he may seem to long and cry for
other things more than for the presence of God, and to find his
1 W. W. Battershall. ' W. R. Inge, Truth and Falsehood in Beligion.

PSALM cxxx. I 119

peace and joy in them ; but when his soul is moved and searched,
and the fountains of the great deep are broken up, in all those
crises which throw light on the inner condition and movement of
his being, the cry for God is seen to be fundamental, and his
longing to connect his life in some way with the life of the
invisible and eternal world is felt to be an irrepressible
longing, which tends ever to rise into a strong and intense
passion.

^ It was once said by a celebrated English lawyer of our time
that the man who could not get on without religion, who could not
occupy his mind with love, friendship, business, politics, science,
art, literature, and travel, must be a poor kind of creature. It
is, on the contrary, the man who can be wholly satisfied with out-
ward and earthly things apart from God who is the poor kind of
creature living upon the surface of his nature, with the energies
of his spirit still dormant, or so suppressed and overborne that
they are in danger of dying out. To be truly a man is to have
infinite capacity for God, to have desires, affections, and needs
which the things of civilization and culture cannot satisfy, which
can be satisfied only in communion with the Divine. Man, be he
what he may, is made to be a seeker after God ; and, because he
cannot escape from himself, he cannot escape from God.^

^ The one thought which possesses me most at this time and,
I may say, has always possessed me, is that we have been dosing
our people with religion when what they want is not this but the
Living God, and that we are threatened now, not with the loss of
religious feeling, so-called, or of religious notions, or of religious
observances, but with Atheism. Everywhere I seem to perceive
this peril. The battle within, the battle without, is against this ;
the heart and the flesh of our countrymen is crying out for God.
We give them a stone for bread, systems for realities; they
despair of ever attaining what they need. The upper classes
become, as may happen, sleekly devout for the sake of good order,
avowedly believing that one must make the best of the world
without God ; the middle classes try what may be done, by keep-
ing themselves warm in dissent and agitation, to kill the sense of
hollowness ; the poor, who must have realities of some kind, and
understanding from their betters that all but houses and lands are
abstractions, must make a grasp at them or else destroy them.
And the specific for all this evil is some evangelical discourse
upon the Bible being the rule of faith, some High Church cry for
^ J. Hunter, De Profundis Clamavi, 15.

I20 DE PROFUNDIS

tradition, some liberal theory of education. Surely we want to
preach it in the ears of all men. It is not any of these things or
all these things together you want, or that those want who speak
of them. All are pointing towards a Living Being, to know whom
is life, and all, so far as they are set up for any purpose but
leading us into that knowledge, and so to fellowship with each
other, are dead things which cannot profit.^

2. No one can call from the depths until he has gone down
into the depths ; and no one can reasonably expect God to be
" attentive unto the voice of his supplication " until he cry " out
of the depths." There is much outward prayer in the present
day. Services, and means of grace, and administrations of the
Sacraments are multiplied, and many wonder that there is not a
corresponding visible result in life and morals. Is it not possible
that the failure may arise from the conditions of successful prayer
not being fulfilled ? May not the charge against Israel be partly
true against ourselves — This people honoureth me with their
lips ; but their heart is far from me ? They have fasted to the
letter and not to the spirit. The " cry," the worship, the prayer,
may not have come from the " depths " of conscious spiritual need,
and so it has not reached the everlasting hills ; it has not risen to
the throne of the Lord's Presence ; it has not awakened and could
not awaken a responsa How can we expect the great and holy
God to be " attentive " when we are scarcely attentive ourselves,
when our utterances are merely formal, dictated by no feeling of
penitence or awe ? To approach God acceptably, to speak to Him
aright, the cry must come " out of the depths " of the soul, and to
do this a man must go down into those depths.

The Psalmist went down into the depths of shame on account
of his sin, and his cry is therefore the sharp cry of penitence.
This is plain from his words ; for he adds, " If thou. Lord, shouldest
mark iniquities, 0 Lord, who shall stand ? But there is forgive-
ness with thee, that thou mayest be feared." His conscience had
been awakened. He had realized the enormity of sin. His
accuser had stood before him, charging him with faults enough to
condemn him for ever. He had seen that he was full of sin,
burdened with guilt, in imminent danger of punishment. He
sank into the depths, overwhelmed by fear, beholding the justice

^ The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 369.

PSALM cxxx. I 12 1

of God and His power to inflict penalty, swallowed up in despair
and the consciousness of guilt.

^ The Cross of Calvary which tells of the awfulness of sin
speaks also of the mercy of a sin-forgiving God. The soul looks
to the completed sacrifice of propitiation and thence to the risen,
living Saviour, who continues to make intercession for us. Well
has the poet Tenner expressed the experience —

Up from the deeps, 0 God, I cry to Thee,

Hear my soul's prayer, hear Thou her litany,

O Thou who sayest, " Come, wanderer, home to Me."

Up from the deeps of sorrow, wherein lie
Dark secrets veiled from earth's unpitying eye.
My prayers, like star-crowned angels, Godward fly.

Not from life's shallows where the waters sleep,
A dull, low marsh where stagnant waters sleep.
But ocean-voiced, deep calling unto deep.

3. In the lowest depths the cry of the soul becomes most im-
portunate. Down in the depths the suffering soul instinctively
reaches out its hands even though manacled by doubt — instinctively
raises its voice, even though bitter with rebellion — for God, for
nothing less than God, for God as the only One sufficient for the
awful needs of the lonely failing heart. Such depths are places
of revelation. They show what even the common superficial life
needs, though it may not be aware of it. They bid us know our
real Helper, that when we rise again to the common level we
may not forget the supreme lesson taught us by this ghmpse,
through tears, into the tremendous realities of life.

^ " Perhaps to suffer," wrote the Swiss theologian, Vinet, in
one of his letters, " is nothing else than to live deeply. Love and
sorrow are the conditions of a profound life." A truer word was
never spoken. The tragedy in which we live is meant to educate
us. There would indeed be no understanding of life at all did we
not know from experience that in life's depths we receive our
best teaching and training. Out of the depths have come the
finest poetry, the finest music, the finest speech of the world.
" The Bible owes its place in literature," said Emerson, " not to
miracles, but to the fact that it comes from a profounder depth of
life than any other book." Out of the depths have come the
most inspired and inspiring of the psalms of faith, both ancient

122 DE PROFUNDIS

and modem. Out of the depths men have brought blessings
which are rarely found in green pastures and by still waters.
We never know how much God is the one great need of the soul
till we go down to the depths.^

III.

The Hearek of Prayer.

The Psalmist's cry is addressed to the Lord, and we notice
that the word " Lord " is printed in capital letters ; and whenever
the word Lord is in capitals it stands for Jehovah. This was the
highest name of God. It was considered so sacred by the Jew
that he never pronounced it. When he read the Scriptures he
substituted another name — Adonai — which was of a less sacred
character. This name appears in the second and third verses of
the psalm. Indeed we cannot be quite certain as to the right
pronunciation of this incommunicable name of the God of Israel.

1. Does this God hear ? Is there a Divine response to man's
cry from the depths ? There must be in the nature of things, we
are persuaded, such a response, something outside of man answer-
ing to his inner life and fulfilling its needs, actual movement and
manifestation on the part of God corresponding to our natural
cravings after Him. Out of the depths man cries, down to the
depths God must come, meeting with a corresponding answer every
real want of the souls He has made to seek after Him, if haply
they may feel after Him and find Him. Whatever may be the
relations between human aspiration and Divine condescension,
whatever may be the conditions of the coming down of the
heavenly help to human need, it is simply impossible for any
religious soul to think that there is no approach of God to man.
Unless life is a tremendous unreality and illusion, and we come
into the world only to be fooled and cheated ; unless the universe
departs from its order in dealing with the spiritual necessities of
mankind and the cry for God meets with exceptional treatment,
quite unlike that given to the other functions and attitudes of our
nature, it is simply inconceivable that the fundamental cravings

* J. Hunter, De Pro/undis Clamavi, 22.

PSALM cxxx. I 123

of the soul can exist without their satisfaction and the prayer
from the depths remain unanswered.

^ The objection that prayer involves the dictation of man to
God; that prayer, where it is answered, means the control of
things by man's uninformed wishes, rather than by infinite wis-
dom, or by the reign of law, falls at once to the ground when we
consider what true prayer really is. It is a travesty of the idea
to suppose it means saying to God, " Do this, or that " ; " Give me
what I want." For the genuine prayer comes in the first instance
not from man, but from God Himself. It is the gracious circula-
tion of Divine ideas through the human soul. It is the rain from
heaven, falling upon this prepared soil, and springing up there in
love, and trust, and holy resignation to a Will higher than itself.
It is, as Goethe has somewhere put it, God seeking for Himself
and meeting Himself in man. Prayer at its truest is not man
having his way with God, but God having His way with man.^

2. God answers man's cry for forgiveness, for reconciliation
and union with Him. The great obstacle to religion in our world
is not ignorance, but sin. More than enlightenment, we need
salvation. Can all our civilization minister to a troubled con-
science ? Can all our culture heal a guilty pang ? Can the
knowledge of any scientific, philosophical, or theological truth sub-
due an evil passion ? But in the depths of our weakness and sin
God is our salvation. The deliverance of man is dear to God. It
is the essential nature of love to seek and to save. Because God
is love. He is ever coming down to the depths of our life, depths
of sorrow and sin, the deepest depths of degradation, in order to
help and to bring to Himself by all the power of His love His
wayward and disobedient children. Whether it be a fallen or a
rising world we live in, we know in our hearts that we need re-
conciliation with the God of the world. Blessed be His eternal
love ! He has never been outside His world, but has been always
in it, bearing the sins and carrying the sorrows of our race. Its
history is the history of redemption, the history of the unceasing
efforts of Him with whom we have to do, to influence without
compelling the vagrant and stubborn wills of men.

^ We must hold on fast to the fact that God's forgiveness is
a very real thing, and not a mere dramatic thing ; and that if we
' J, Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 64.

124 DE PROFUNDIS

have to sufifer what seems a disproportionate penalty for our fault,
it is not sent us because God is merely an inflexible exactor of
debts, but because by exacting them He gives us something that we
could in no other way attain to. Where we go wrong is in com-
paring God to a human disciplinarian. If a father says to a son,
" I forgive you, but I am going to punish you just the same," we
may frankly conclude that he does not know what forgiveness
means. The fact that he punishes merely means that he does not
really trust the son's repentance, but is going to make sure that
the son's repentance is not merely a plea for remission. We have
to act so, or we believe that we have to act so, on occasions, to
other human beings ; but it is only because we cannot really read
their hearts. If we knew that a repentance was complete and
sincere, we should not need to exact any punishment at all. But
with God there can be no such concealments. If a man repents
of a sin and puts it away from him, and if none of the dreaded
consequences do befall him, he may be grateful indeed for a
gracious forgiveness. But if the consequences do fall on him, he
may inquire whether his repentance had indeed been sincere, or
only a mere dread of contingencies ; while if he is penalized, how-
ever hardly, he may believe that his sufferings will bring him a
blessing, and that by no other road can he reach peace.^

^ A. C. Benson Along the Hood, 244.

Unity.

MS

Literature.

Jowett (B.), Sermons Biographical and Miscellaneous^ 338.

McCook (H. C), The Gospel in Nature, 45.

Maclaren (A.), The Book of Psalms (Expositor's Bible), iii. 355.

Pentecost (G. F.), Bible Studies : Mark, and Jewish History, 305.

Simpson (J. G.), Christian Ideals, 93.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xxviii. (1905), No, 29 ; xxxiii. (1910), No. 9.

Christian World Pulpit, xiv. 281 (R. Tuck) ; Ivii. 279 (R. A. Armstrong).

Church of England Magazine, xxix. 24 (T. Preston).

Church of England Pulpit, xL 268 (O. F. S. P. Jenkins) ; liv. 19

(G. P. Home).
Church Pulpit Year Book, 1905, p. 138 (M. Woodward).
Guardian, Ixix. (1914) 139 (S. Bickersteth).
Sunday Magazine, 1893, p. 643 (B. Waugh).

nd

Unity.

Behold, how gfood and pleasant it is

For brethren to dwell together in unity. — Ps. cxxxiii. i.

1. Herder says of this exquisite little song that " it has the
fragrance of a lovely rose." Nowhere has the nature of true
unity — that unity which binds men together, not by artificial
restraints, but as brethren of one heart — been more faithfully
described, nowhere so gracefully illustrated, as in this short ode.
True concord, we are here taught, is a holy thing, a sacred oil, a
rich perfume, which, flowing down from the head to the beard,
from the beard to the garment, sanctifies the whole body. It is a
sweet morning dew, which falls not only on the lofty mountain-
peaks but on the lesser hills, embracing all and refreshing all
with its influence.

2. The preservation of this unity was the object of the
selection of one place to which the tribes should go up on
pilgrimage three times a year. And the intercommunion with
each other which the pilgrimages fostered was certainly one of the
chief means by which the unity of feeling and sentiment was
kept up among the scattered members of the nation century after
century. The pilgrimages were to the Israelites what the
meetings at the Olympic and other games were to the Greeks — at
once witnesses to a belief in ethnic unity and a strong and
efficient bond of union. This psalm was therefore admirably
fitted for a " pilgrim song," which it is allowed on all hands to
have been, and it must have greatly helped the various classes of
pilgrims — the spiritual and secular authorities, the rich, the poor,
the citizen, the peasant, and the widely divided members of the
great Diaspora — to feel themselves united with each other and
with Jehovah.

i»7

128 UNITY

I.

The Secret of Unity.

There are innumerable ways in which we are bound together
in life. There are ties of relationship or of friendship, nearer or
more distant, of class and occupation, of common tastes, of
personal likings, of religious feeling, of natural affection. There
is that higher tie by which men are united in the endeavour to
become better and to live above the world. There is still a
higher union which, in our imperfect state, may be thought
visionary or impossible, when the wills of men meet in God, and
they know no other law or rule of life than His will. Yet there
have been those in whom such a unity of the human and the
Divine has really existed — it might exist in any of us. All these
unities have in them elements of diversity arising out of circum-
stances or character or education. And to preserve the " one in
many " (as the ancient philosopher would have said) is the first
duty of any society, of mankind, of a family, a school, a college, a
church, a nation.

1. A common life binds together the members of a family. A
common life is the basis of the unity of a nation. Yet these can
but illustrate the far more complete and searching unity of those,
who, having the common life — the sublime, spiritual, eternal life
in Christ — come together into the fellowship of the Christian
Church. They are one in bonds that are eternal ; one by no mere
accident of natural birth, or social place ; one in ways that cannot
pass with the changing fashions of the world. They are one as
being born again of the Spirit ; as being created anew in Christ
Jesus ; as being quickened from the death of trespasses and sins ;
as being bought, not with corruptible things as silver or gold, but
with the precious blood of Christ. Their common life in Christ
breathes one common atmosphere, and feeds on one common food,
and finds expression in one common want. They breathe in the
smile of Christ's acceptance, and the knowledge of Christ's will.
They feed on Christ's provision of grace. They want, above all
things, Christ's honour. So they are one in the unity of their
common life.

PSALM cxxxiTi. I 129

^ We can form mechanical unions. We can bind wood and
iron and gold and silver together. Each object that enters the
combination retains all the qualities peculiar to it. Theje is
union is such combinations but not unity. Gold is the same in all
parts of the universe. It is the same in all ages and in all
worlds. The same is true of all Christians. They are begotten of
God ; they are possessed of His nature ; they are one in mind
and in heart. They are one in spite of the flight of time.
Christians of the first century and of the last and of all inter-
vening centuries form one community. They are one in spite of
space. Christians in all parts of the world, those that speak
different tongues and have different manners and customs, are one
flock, even as they are all tended by one Shepherd. They are one
in spite of a_ll_ differences, physical, mental, social, and spiritual.
They are children^~of brie Father, and they constitute the one
household of the faith.^

2. There is unity in diversity. You cast your eye over a
landscape, and your heart rejoices in the harmony unfolded from
the scene before you, yet_there is everywhere a difference in
manifestation. In the beauty and grace of the forms which you
see, in the spirit which insensibly reveals itself to you from wood
and stream, lake, meadow, and mountain-side, you feel the sense
of oneness. One Mind has evidently planned all this. One
Hand, through whatever channels of physical force, has mani-
festly moulded all this. Yet, when group by group and item by
item, you turn your eye and thought upon the objects of this
landscape, you note how wide the difference is between the one
and the other. May it not be thus also with the Church of the
living God ? May not the blessing of Divine grace rest, and the
sweetness of brotherly unity abide, equally upon the hills of
God's universal Zion, whether they tower from the north in the
peaks of Hermon or roll away southward to the mountains
round about Jerusalem ?

^ As no two blades of grass are exactly alike, so no two
minds are capable of looking at any truth in precisely the same
light. Queen Elizabeth could not get her ministers to agree
among themselves as to a certain policy. She took half a dozen
watches and started them all at the same time. After a while
some lagged behind, others shot forward ; no two kept together.

^ A. M'Lean, Where the Book Speaks, 231.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 9

I30 UNITY

'' Ah ! " said she, " I may well give up trying to make my ministers
agree, when I cannot get half a dozen watches to keep time
together." But nature has unity in the most varied diversity.
No two atoms in the countless number that make up our globe
are exactly alike, yet they make up an entire world. No two
drops in the sea are probably alike in weight and form, yet they
all unite to make up one sea. No two sands are identical, still
they all unite to make up one shore. Behold here is unity in
diversity. Taking a broad view —

The Church's one foundation

Is Jesus Christ her Lord:
She is His new creation

By water and the word.

The foundation is one ; the stones built on the foundation are as
varied as can possibly be ; but they all unite to make one building.
Much, then, as we may vary in things non-essential, is there not
a common basis on which all Christians can unite on things
essential ? ^

3. Unity does not obliterate individuality but gives room for
its free development. A living organism, such as the body of
man or any other animal, is not merely a unity of parts, each of
which fulfils a function necessary to the rest, so that the brain,
heart, lungs, the various members and organs, have absolutely no
separate or separable existence or life, so that each lives in and
by the rest, their life its life, its life not its own but theirs ; but,
more than that, it is a unity which, unlike that of the machine,
the parts themselves feel, so that each suffers in the injury or
suffering, is happy with the happiness and well-being, of the rest.
The closer and more integral oneness is not attained at the cost,
but rather by the more intense development, of individual dis-
tinctiveness. Each member and organ is itself, attains to the
richest development of its individual nature, gains itself, so to
speak, only where it surrenders itself, its whole being and activity,
to the unity in which it is comprehended. If it begins to act for
itself, to seclude itself, to display any independent phenomena,
any slightest movement that is not conditioned by the organism
to which it belongs, the isolation is fatal. And if it is entirely
separated from the rest, if it ceases to be permeated by a life

1 O. F. S. P. Jenkins.

PSALM cxxxiii. I 131

that is other than its own, the severed limb or dissected organ
loses its whole reality and worth, and becomes mere dead matter.

^ In the last year of his life, the Bishop wrote to Dr. Guinness
Eogers, one of the best known of the leaders of English Noncon-
formity : " To me it is the most painful proof of our inadequate
hold on the principles of Christianity that the profession of those
principles should be a cause of disunion and bitter feeling.
Attempts to remedy this fail because they conceive unity as
something external and structural. When we look at the de-
velopment of the world, we see increasingly varied opinions kept
within useful limits by a general sense of the common welfare.
I can conceive of a Christian commonwealth, consisting of bodies
of believers each with opinions of their own about matters of
organization, understanding one another, and respecting one
another, yet conscious of a common purpose, which transcends
all human methods. An Italian friend of mine quoted in a letter
a saying of a Greek Bishop — that our systems were necessary
protections against the storms of the world, but though the walls
might be thick below, they all opened to the same heaven." ^

11.

The Eealization of Unity.

1. The Psalmist gives us two figures. Both are peculiar, and
perhaps difficult for us to understand; but both are very ex-
pressive to the Eastern mind. They are the figures of the oil
and the dew. Brotherly unity is like " the precious oil upon the
head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard ; that
came down upon the skirt of his garments." Brotherly unity is
like " the dew of Hermon, that cometh down upon the mountains
of Zion." Evidently in each of these figures the pervading,
spreading, and beautifying influence of the sympathetic spirit is
represented. God Himself pours on men the sacred anointing of
His Divine Spirit and the dew of His quickening influences.
When His servants are knit together, as they should be, they
impart to one another the spiritual gifts received from above.
When Christians are truly one as brethren, God's grace will
fructify through each to all.

* Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 472.

132 UNITY

(1) Like the 'precious oil. — Easterns perfumed themselves with
fragrant oils, much as we do now with scented spirits ; and the
idea of the ointment spoken of would come home better to us if
it were called " scent." The fragrant oil used to prepare the high
priest for his solemn duties was made by special injunction from
God, and the smell of it was strong and delightful. Poured on
Aaron's head, it ran down his face and neck, touched the collar
of his robe, and spread its fragrance to its very edge, and the
whole place was filled and sanctified with the delightful Divine
odours. So, pour down on any family, or Church, the sweet-
smelling oil of unity, peacefulness, mutual bearing and forbearing,
and brotherly love, and it will flow down over the whole body,
adorning every member, and making every one a centre of frag-
rance and a fount of blessing.

The emblem is felicitous by reason of the preciousness, the
fragrance and the manifold uses of oil ; but these are to be taken
into account only in a subordinate degree, if at all. The one
point of comparison is the flow of the oil from the priestly head
on to the beard and thence to the garments. It is doubtful
whether ver. 2 refers to the oil or to the beard of the high priest.
The latter reference is preferred by many, but the former
is more accordant with the parallelism, and with the use of the
word " flows down," which can scarcely be twice used in regard to
oil and dew, the main subjects in the figures, and be taken in an
entirely different reference in the intervening clause.

^ Luther says, " In that He saith ' from the head,' He showeth
the nature of true concord. For like as the ointment ran down
from the head of Aaron, the high priest, upon his beard, and
so descended unto the borders of his garments, even so true
concord in doctrine and brotherly love floweth as a precious
ointment, by the unity of the Spirit, from Christ, the High Priest
and Head of the Church, unto all the members of the same. For
by the beard and extreme parts of the garment He signifieth,
that as far as the Church reacheth, so far spreadeth the unity
which floweth from Christ her head."

(2) Like the dew of Hermon. — In this figure the same idea is
preserved. The dew touches first the head, the high hill of
Hermon, but it descends to the lesser hills of Zion, and spreads its
refreshing influences over mountain-side and vale. Dew is the

PSALM cxxxiii. I 133

emblem of Divine grace and blessing, so it may well be used as a
figure for the special grace of brotherly unity. Wherever that
gracious dew falls, the dry families, the dry churches of Zion, are
surely nourished and refreshed.

^ How can the dew of Hermon in the far north fall on the
mountains of Zion ? Some commentators, as Delitzsch, try to
make out that " an abundant dew in Jerusalem might rightly be
accounted for by the influence of the cold current of air sweep-
ing down from the north over Hermon." But that is a violent
supposition ; and there is no need to demand meteorological
accuracy from a poet. It is the one dew which falls on both
mountains; and since Hermon towers high above the height of
Zion, and is visited with singular abundance of the nightly bless-
ing, it is no inadmissible poetic licence to say that the loftier hill
transmits it to the lesser. Such community of blessing is the
result of fraternal concord, whereby the high serve the lowly, and
no man grudgingly keeps anything to himself, but all share in the
good of each. Dew, like oil, is fitted for this symbolic use, by
reason of qualities which, though they do not come prominently into
view, need not be wholly excluded. It refreshes the thirsty
ground and quickens vegetation ; so fraternal concord, falling
gently on men's spirits, and linking distant ones together by a
mysterious chain of transmitted good, will help to revive failing
strength and refresh parched places.^

2. The Spirit of unity needs to be cultivated. The unity of
brotherly love will never become general, still less perfect, until
we have all come to love God our Father supremely, with all our
hearts, never until we see that the next great law which He
wishes us to keep is to love one another as brethren, as all children
of the same family as ourselves, until we see that only by loving
one another can we possibly prove our love to Him. So that the
more we love God the more we shall love one another, because
that is the only way in which we can possibly please Him or be
worthy of our high calling as His sons and daughters ; moreover,
this is the only way by which to know Him truly. And in
the cultivation of sympathy with others we develop our own
higher selves.

Personality has no existence except in and through fellowship.
So we who believe that there is a vital distinction between persons

^ 4- Maclaren.

134 UNITY

and things, and that persons are made in the image of God, and
are redeemed by Him in order that they may be restored to His
likeness, cannot acquiesce in any permanent separation from the
innermost law of God's own life, which unveils to us — as far as
we can discern it — personality perfected in and through fellow-
ship. Each time that we proclaim our belief in the doctrine of the
Trinity we bind ourselves afresh to try to learn the Divine secret
which must be true, not only within the Godhead, but of all
human personalities called into being by Him. It may well be
that we are placed on earth on purpose to learn this lesson of
communion and fellowship one with the other, with the laws which
govern it, and with the hope for our race bound up in it.

^ The recently published journals of Scott's Last Expedi-
tion supply precisely the illustration that we need. That
expedition consisted of sixty-five members, thirty-two of whom
were connected with the ship's crew and thirty-two formed that
party, who, with him as leader, landed and lived together in that
ice-bound region, five of them fighting their way over the 800
miles which separated them from the goal of their ambition. It
is worth noting that this intrepid body were representative of
many interests. If capitalists had contributed large sums of
money for the privilege of taking part in it, no less had labour its
representatives in those whose chief recommendation consisted in
their capacity for hard work. Art, as well as science in several
branches, was ably represented among them ; some were of the
learned professions, while others could be described as unlearned
and ignorant men. Both the great services, the Navy and the
Army, made characteristic contributions in the men of grit and
character who represented them. Only those who have read the
journals can realize the abundant excuses which might have been
put forward had dissension and diversity of opinion broken out
among them. But what do we read in Captain Scott's own words ?
— " Never could there have been a greater freedom from quarrels or
troubles of all sorts. I have never heard a harsh word or seen a
black look. It is glorious to realize that men can live together
under conditions of hardship, monotony, and danger, in such
bountiful good-comradeship and harmony." While on board, we
read, " Not a word of complaint or of danger has been heard, and
the inner life of our small community is very pleasant to think
upon, and also very wonderful considering the small space in
which we are confined." In the hut during the weary months
from January to November, 1911, Captain Scott's many refer-

PSALM cxxxiii. I 135

ences to their unity may be summed up in the following striking
witness of it : "I am very much impressed with the extraordinary
and genuine cordiality of the relations which exist among our
people. I do not suppose that a statement of real truth — that is,
there is no friction at all — will be believed. It is so generally
thought that the many rubs of such a life as this are quietly and
purposely sunk into oblivion. With me there is no need to draw
a veil — there is nothing to cover up. There are no strained rela-
tions existing here and nothing is more emphatically evident than
the universal amicable spirit that is shown on all occasions."
Here, then, it will be granted that men found it a good thing for
brethren to dwell together in unity ; but the question arises how
was it done ? The answer may give us at least an indication
of the remedy to meet our own need. It was their unbounded
belief in their leader. Each and all found their unity in sub-
ordinating their will to his. They were not of the same mind,
still less were they of the same opinion, but they were all " hke-
minded " in this respect, to quote the distinction which Bishop
Creighton made in commenting on St. Peter's analysis, " Be ye all
like-minded, sympathetic." Although there were moments when
the Commander's decision caused terrible disappointment to indi-
viduals and groups of individuals, yet we read that they took it
very well and behaved like men. Secondly, " enduring hardness "
was common to them all, leader and followers alike. They found
themselves bound together in an inhospitable region, bent on
achieving a difl&cult enterprise, each needing help, each rendering
it in turn. Under these conditions they learnt how to live in an
atmosphere of constant self-sacrifice, and the division and disunion
which so often arises from unconscious self-assertion, rooted in
self-will, must have been, as it were, " frost-bitten " at its very
beginning and allowed to perish. Even greater proof of their
possession of the virtue of self-repression was given by the
magnanimity with which they met their disappointment at dis-
covering that rival explorers had outstripped them. There was
no little-mindedness, though natural disappointment, at realizing
that, while the victory had been won, yet the pre-eminence and
priority of being first belonged to their competitors, not to them-
selves. This most difficult lesson of learning to rate the triumph
of a cause higher than the triumph of personally achieving it was
not the least of the hardships by which they were tried and
tested and not found wanting. Again, they had, and realized that
they had, the eyes of the nation upon them, and not of one
nation only, but of the whole civilized world. The interest taken
by the whole world in the news of the fate of the five heroic men

136 UNITY

who laid down their lives for their cause proved the tension and
suspense with which they were being watched. These men were,
and felt themselves to be, trustees of the national honour and
national traditions. It was therefore true instinct which led their
leader not only to plant his country's flag at the South Pole, but
also at the hour of his death to ask that a portion of that flag
might be handed to his Sovereign, for he and his companions had
earned the right to be regarded as representatives of the Empire.^

III.

The Blessings of Unity.

" For there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for
evermore." Does this mean for the individual simply a life that
is to be endless ? In the light of the whole Psalter one may
answer " No." " For ever " in the Old Testament has a relative
sense, which has in each particular case to be separately investi-
gated. If it were simply endless life, we might be encouraged to
think of God's blessing as continuous prosperity in outward
circumstances. It is altogether better to have that kind of
blessing from God changeable, because our circumstances cannot
remain long the same, and the relation of circumstances to us,
and the influence of circumstances on us, are constantly varying.
If God were to imprison and fix one set of circumstances for ever,
and give us to choose which we would have thus fixed, we should
be hopelessly puzzled, and God would be doing us no kindness.
People talk about " for ever " and " everlasting," without thinking
to what alone those terms can be appUed, if they are to represent
any real blessing to us. The entire sphere of the sensual cannot
be "for evermore." It is of its very nature that it begins and
ends. The " fashion of this world passeth away." It is life that
is for evermore. It is the spiritual being that man is that lives
for ever. It is the spiritual character that man wins that abides
for ever. And helping him to win that character is the blessing
— the " life for evermore " which God bestows.

1. With Christian unity there comes peace. In the Psalmist's
days brotherly unity brought peace. Benjamin ceased to " ravin
* Canon Bickersteth, in The Ouardian, Jan. 30, 1914,

PSALM cxxxiii. I 137

as a wolf," and Ephraim no longer "vexed Judah." The civil
strife of the land ceased, and peace flowed like a river. It is so
always when Christian unity gains its holy power. Strife fails.
Brotherhood hangs up the needless sword and shield and spear.
Brotherhood soon forgets all jealousies, and ceases to practise the
arts of war. Brotherhood makes mutual injury impossible.
Brothers bear one another's burdens. Brothers in Christ follow
peace with all men, and holiness. Brothers have one great
anxiety, that, if it be possible, they may see eye to eye, and be of
one mind in the Lord. Unity ever brings with it peace.

^ As a basis of Christian fellowship and fully acknowledged
brotherhood, we hold that nothing more is necessary than evidence
of unfeigned faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. " Unum corpus
sumus IN Ceristo." That is enough : " Christ is all and in all."
But, so far, we seem to be getting farther and farther from a
union that is manifest to the world. A great ecclesiastical
organization is a visible thing; uniformity, though less im-
pressive, is yet quite easily observed ; even a creed is something
that can be made visible after a fashion by the use of the press ;
but this " faith in Christ " withdraws the essential unity so entirely
into the spiritual region that the world cannot be expected to
follow it there and find it out, and be any the wiser or better for
it. It remains, then, to show how this unity of faith in Christ
can be made manifest to the world. And here it will be safe to
go to the Apostle Paul. "Neither circumcision," he says, "nor
uncircumcision, but faith " — so far so good, and what next ? " Faith
working through love." Here we have the transition from the
invisible to the visible. The faith which links each Christian to
Christ is unseen by men, but the love which is the result of it,
need not, cannot in fact, be concealed from them, if it is there in
force. And every effort should be made to promote the love
among Christians, and to induce them to avail themselves of all
means within their reach, not only of cherishing it in their hearts,
but also of expressing it in their lives. There has been progress
in this direction too, very marked and happy progress, in recent
years ; but there needs to be a much larger development and
fuller expression of this Christian affection before much impression
can be made on an unbelieving world. It must, in fact, be so
marked and remarkable as not only to compel attention, but to
oblige those who observe it to ask the questions, How can it be ?
Whence has it come ? No one can say that this point has yet been
reached.^

1 J, jyionro Gibson, Christianity According to Christ, 102,

138 UNITY

2. Unity brings pleasantness. "Behold, how good and how
pleasant it is ! " Unity puts graciousness and beauty upon a
community or a church, so that men think it pleasant to look upon.
Unity is a bloom upon the fruit, sunshine upon the landscape,
polish upon the diamond, health upon the face, morning glow
upon the flowers, tone in the voice, and deep clear blue iu
the vast sky. Unity tints a family, a church, an enterprise with
pleasantness. How pleasant for brethren to dwell together in
unity !

^ It is related of the Duke of Wellington, that once when he
remained to take the sacrament at his parish church, a very poor
old man went up the opposite aisle, and, reaching the communion
table, knelt down close by the side of the duke. Some one
(probably a pew opener) came and touched the poor man on the
shoulder, and whispered to him to move farther away, or to rise
and wait until the duke had received the bread and wine. But
the eagle eye and quick ear of the great commander caught the
meaning of that touch and that whisper. He clasped the old
man's hand, and held him, to prevent his rising, and in a
reverential undertone, but most distinctly, said, " Do not move ;
we are all equal here." ^

3. Unity is the secret of prosperity. Divided, men ever fail,
but united, they become more than conquerors. The strands of a
rope will not hold a child from falling. Knit them together,
twine them about each other, and they will hold the great ship
to her moorings. United, God gives prosperity. " It shall come
to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the
heavens, and they shall hear the earth ; and the earth shall hear
the corn, and the wine, and the oil ; and they shall hear Jezreel."
God withholds His blessing until the cry that rises to Him is the
united cry of land and sky and crops and men.

^ During the siege of the legations in Peking national lines
and religious lines were forgotten. In the presence of the
infuriated Boxers all felt that they were one and that their
salvation depended upon their standing together. Protestant and
Catholic and Greek were one for the time. During the siege
wherever the line was hard pressed there the defenders rallied,
regardless of what nationality held the hard pressed point, because
a, failure at one point meant a failure at every point. One of the

1 B. Tuck.

PSALM cxxxiii. I 139

interesting incidents of the siege was connected with the inter-
national gun. This was an old Enghsh six-pounder. It was
mounted on an Austrian carriage; it was loaded with German
powder and Russian shells ; it was fired by the trained hand and
eye of an American gunner. Had it not been for the spirit of
unity that prevailed in that most critical period all must have
perished.^

4. Unity gives power. Our Lord evidently had a profound
idea of the value and power of unity among His disciples. In
His last prayer observe what He seemed most to desire for them :
" That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in
thee, that they also may be in us : that the world may believe
that thou hast sent me." As soon as a church was gathered,
the spirit of concord seemed to be a necessary feature, which appeared
without being forced. " These all continued with one accord in
prayer and supplication." They all continued " daily with one
accord in the temple," etc. Writing to the churches the Apostles
evidently think that brotherly unity is of the utmost importance
to the prosperity of those communities. They constantly urge its
preservation. " Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind,
live in peace ; and the God of love and peace shall be with you."
" I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions
among you ; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same
mind, and in the same judgment." " We, being many, are one body
in Christ, and every one members one of another." " Be kindly
affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour pre-
ferring one another." " I beseech Euodias, and beseech Syntyche,
that they be of the same mind in the Lord." " Looking diligently
lest any man fail of the grace of God ; lest any root of bitterness
springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled." "Let
brotherly love continue." "But as touching brotherly love ye
need not that I write unto you : for ye yourselves are taught of
God to love one another." " Endeavouring to keep the unity of
the Spirit in the bond of peace."

^1 The dew-drop, we are told, has within it a latent thunder-
bolt, yet it melts away into the corolla of the wild flower, and does
its gentle work of nurture so silently that no ear can mark it,

^ A. Mcl^ean, Where the Book Speaks, 239.

HO UNITY

There are many men, and yet more women, who sink mildly into
the earth-currents of life like a dew-drop, who have latent thunder
enough within them to shake society if it should once go forth in
that wise. But would their power for good be thereby any
greater ? Is not that a false estimate of moral forces which
measures them by the noise and stir, the flash and thunderous
echoes, which result from their exercise ? Are not gentleness and
repose, after all, the mightiest powers ? Let those who love and
choose to have their words distil as the dew remember that in
the silent, unobtrusive acts of daily life they may be treasuring
up in other hearts forces which in their final outcome will give
countless blessings to the world.^

^ No mere coincidence of opinion or of practice in other
directions can be compared in uniting power with devotion to our
Lord Jesus Christ. Even now, amidst all our outward schisms,
and all our inward alienations from each other, it makes our
hearts burn within us to speak together of Christ. At such
moments — of course I mean where the love of Christ is seen to
be genuine and single-hearted — we feel impatient of those miser-
able barriers which have erected themselves between us to defeat
or to delay His purposes. We are conscious of being really one,
and feel that it is a shame that that unity should not be allowed
to have its open and glad expression. What right have diver-
gences of opinion or practice by which either party intends only
the promotion of the cause of Christ to interrupt ecclesiastical
unity between those who love each other for the love that both
bear to Him ? In the ancient days the love of Christ was con-
fessed to be the internal principle of Christian unity. " Grace be
with all them who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity " : so
St. Paul ends the great Epistle which displays the glories of the
one holy Church. It is adoring love of Christ which is the true
fundamental article of the Christian creed. It may co-exist
with many mistakes, many superstitions, many blindnesses ; and
Christians may well be patient with these, while seeking to
increase that central love which, in its natural and healthy action,
will at last dispel them. " If the persons be Christians in their
lives, and Christians in their profession " — I would heartily adopt
the glowing words of Jeremy Taylor — " If they acknowledge the
Eternal Son of God for their Master and Lord, and live in all
relations as becomes persons making such professions, why then
should I hate such persons whom God loves and who love God,
who are partakers of Christ and Christ hath a title to them, who
dwell in Christ and Christ in them, because their understandings
^ U' C. McCook, The Qospel in Nature, 6p,

PSALM cxxxm. i 141

have not been brought up like mine . . . have not the same
opinions that I have, and do not determine their school questions
to the sense of my sect or interest ? " God grant that we may so
prize and exalt Christ above all, extol and magnify His person so
incomparably over all, that the common devotion to Him may
annul and bear down the divisions which keep us asunder, and
make us again to be outwardly one as He left His first disciples
one, until we reach that yet richer and Diviner unity which was
to be the reward and consummation of abiding in the fellowship
which He established.^

^ A. J. Mason, The Prmcijples of Ecclesiastical Unity, 64.

The Encompassing God.

Literature.

Barnett (T. R,), The Blessed Ministry of CJaldhoodi 51.
Ealand (F.), The Spirit of Life, 55.
Jowett (J. H.), Brooks by the Traveller's Way, 22.
Martineau (J.), Endeavowrs after the Christian Life, 13
Street (C. J.), in Sermons by Unitarian Ministers, i. 13.
Christian Age, xxxiv. 386 (H. P. Liddon).
Homiletic Review, xlix. 371 (N. M. Waters).
National Preacher, xxxvi. 191 (W. G. T. Shedd).
Prsachers' Monthly, v. 73 (C. S. Robinson).

<44

The Encompassing God.

Thou hast beset me behind and before,

And laid thine hand upon me.— Ps. cxxxix. 5.

1. That God besets us behind and before and has laid His hand on
us is the crowning glory, as it is also the perpetual mystery, of
human life. In the light of this truth nothing seems small or
negligible. Every incident and every association of our lot takes
on a new meaning. The stars have a fresh message for us ; the
flowers look up to us with intelligent faces ; God walks in His
garden still, and His voice calls for our recognition. Nothing
becomes impossible for us ; our strength is sufficient for our day,
and new ideals press upon us for acceptance as soon as we have
faithfully done the work of the immediate present.

2. We speak of God as a Person, for want of a better term to
express the thought that He is self-conscious and freely acting, of
a kind with ourselves in all that makes for the difference between
the realm of the Personal and that of the Impersonal, though
infinitely higher, not only than we are, but even than we can
conceive. But we reach an even greater truth when we say that
God is an all-encompassing Spirit, in whom we live and move and
have our being, a Presence everywhere and in all things, a Source
of boundless energy and influence, the Cause and Sustainer and
Hope of all that is. There is nothing inconsistent in these
propositions. It is the same God who, being a pervasive Spirit
and having created us in His own image, maintains relations of
tender watchfulness over His children.

Two great ideas underlie this beautiful text :
I. God's Intimate Knowledge of Man.
II. God's Individual Care of Man.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — lO

146 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD

I.

God's Intimate Knowledge of Man.

1. God accurately and exhaustively knows all that a man
knows of himself. Every man who lives amid Christian influ-
ences has an intimate knowledge of himself. He thinks of the
moral quality of some of his own feelings. He considers the
ultimate tendency of some of his own actions. In other words,
there is a part of his inward and his outward life with which he
is well acquainted; of which he has a distinct apprehension.
There are some thoughts of his mind at which he blushes at the
very time of their origin, because he is vividly aware what they
are, and what they mean. There are some emotions of his heart
at which he trembles and recoils at the very moment of their
uprising, because he perceives clearly that they involve a very
malignant depravity. There are some actings of his will of whose
wickedness he is painfully conscious at the very instant of their
rush and movement.

Now, in reference to all this intimate self-knowledge, man is
not superior to God. He may be certain that in no respect does
he know more of himself than the Searcher of hearts knows. He
may be an uncommonly thoughtful person, and little of what is
done within his soul may escape his notice ; let us make the
extreme supposition that he arrests every thought as it rises, and
looks at it; that he analyzes every sentiment as it swells his
heart ; that he scrutinizes every purpose as it determines his will
— even if he should have such a thorough and profound self-
knowledge as this, God knows him equally profoundly and
equally thoroughly. This process of self-inspection may even go
on indefinitely, and the man grow more and more thoughtful, and
obtain an everlastingly augmenting knowledge of what he is and
what he does, so that it seems to him that he is going down so
far on that path which •' the vulture's eye hath not seen," is
penetrating so deeply into those dim and shadowy regions of
consciousness where the external life takes its very first start, as
to be beyond the reach of any eye and the ken of any intelligence
but his own ; and then he may be sure that God understands the
thought that in afar off, and deep down, and that at this lowest

PSALM cxxxix. 5 147

range and plane in his experience He besets him behind and
before.

^ Let us adore God for the streams of bounty which flow
unceasingly from the fountains of His life, to all His countless
creatures. But, on the other hand, beware lest in thus enlarging
your view of the Infinite One, you lose your hold of the corre-
lative truth — that though all beings of all worlds are His care,
though His mind thus embraces the universe, He is yet as
mindful of you, as if that universe were blotted out, and you
alone survived to receive the plenitude of His care.^

2. Although the Creator designed that man should thoroughly
understand himself, and gave him the power of self-inspection
that he might use it faithfully and apply it constantly, yet man
is exceedingly ignorant of himself. Men, says an old writer, are
nowhere less at home than at home. Very few persons practise
serious self-examination at all, and none employ the power of
self- inspection with that carefulness and diligence with which
they ought. Hence men generally are unacquainted with much
that goes on within their own minds and hearts.

But God knows perfectly all that man might but does not
know of himself. Though the transgressor is ignorant of much of
his sin, because, at the time of its commission he sins blindly as
well as wUfully, and unreflectingly as well as freely ; and though
the transgressor has forgotten much of that small amount of sin
of which he was conscious, and by which he was pained, at the
time of its perpetration ; though on the side of man the powers
of self-inspection and memory have accomplished so little towards
this preservation of man's sin, yet God knows it all, and re-
members it all. " He compasseth man's path, and his lying down,
and is acquainted with all his ways." " There is nothing covered,
therefore, that shall not be revealed ; neither hid that shall not be
known. Whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness, shall be heard
in the light ; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets,
shall be proclaimed upon the house-tops." The Creator of the
human mind has control over its powers of self -inspection and of
memory, and when the proper time comes. He will compel these
endowments to perform their legitimate functions, and do their
appointed work.

» W. E. Channing.

148 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD

^ You will never know what the Psalmist had in mind till
you come upon a young mother all alone with her laughing babe.
The hours are not long. The house is not lonesome for her,
though she has been left for the day. She has her babe. See, it
lies all uncovered in her lap ! The mother is fair, but the child
is fairer. She counts its fingers, she pulls its toes, she kisses its
dimples, she pats its pudgy arms, she studies its features, she
sounds to their depths its eyes and matches their colour with the
skies. She helps it to stand. She coaxes it to walk. She
teaches it to talk. She infects it with laughter. She bathes it
with love. She tells it her secrets. She cries over it for joy.
She multiplies its happiness and bears its sorrow. Mother and
babe — in all the world there is no other vision one-half so fair.
There is no knowledge like love, no explorer like solicitude. She
knows every strength, every weakness, every beauty, every mark
or scar, every characteristic, every disposition, every tendency,
every fault, every charm. The mother has searched her babe and
knows it. A mother with her babe in her arms-r— that is the
Psalmist's picture of the tender care of God for men.^

3. Let us not forget that there is a bright as well as a dark
side to this picture. For if God's exhaustive knowledge of the
human heart wakens dread in one of its aspects, it starts infinite
hope in another. If that Being has gone down into these depths
of human depravity, and seen it with a more abhorring glance
than could ever shoot from a finite eye, and yet has returned with
a cordial offer to forgive it all, and a hearty proffer to cleanse it
all away, then we can lift up the eye in adoration and in hope.
There has been an infinite forbearance and condescension. The
worst has been seen, and that too by the holiest of beings, and
yet eternal glory is offered to us ! God knows from personal
examination the worthlessness of human character, with a
thoroughness and intensity of knowledge of wliich man has no
conception ; and yet, in the light of that knowledge, in the very
flame of that intuition, He has devised a plan of mercy and
redemption.

^ Might I follow the bent of my own mind, my pen, such as
it is, should be wholly employed in setting forth the infinite love
of God to mankind in Christ Jesus, and in endeavouring to draw
all men to the belief and acknowledgment of it. The one great
mercy of God, which makes the one, only happiness of all

1 N. M. Waters.

PSALM cxxxix. 5 149

mankind, so justly deserves all our thoughts and meditations, so
highly enlightens and improves every mind that is attentive to it,
so removes all the evils of this present world, so sweetens every
state of life, and so inflames the heart with the love of every
Divine and human virtue, that he is no small loser whose mind
is either by writing or reading detained from the view and
contemplation of it.^

II.

God's Individual Care of Man.

" Thou hast beset me." Even words may fall into bad com-
pany. Because of its association many a noble word is misjudged,
" Beset " is such a word. We speak of the " besetments " of life.
We pray about the " sin which doth so easily beset us." Job was
beset with calamities. A traveller from Oriental lands tells us
that at Cairo he was beset with dogs and beggars. A young man
goes wrong, and through his tears of shame he tells how for
months he has been literally beset with temptations. "Beset"
we associate with evil. That is the ordinary use of the word.
But that is not the Psalmist's use. It is the glory of the
Scriptures that they are always finding gold where men see only
clay. The Psalmist takes this word out of man's vocabulary and
gives it a heavenly meaning. " Beset " is a strong word and it
shall not belong to evil. The writer snatches it out of its evil
surroundings and makes it spell out for evermore the love of God.
" Thou hast beset me behind and before." He is talking about
God. It is a startling statement. It is like the old prophet and
his servant. So long we have been pursued by evil. Every day
we have seen the Syrians coming up against us. Every morning
we have seen them closer, having moved up in the night. We
are beset by them. That is the testimony of the generations.
And now on this morning our eyes are opened, and, lo ! the hills
are " full of horses and chariots of fire." Like the young man
we cry : " They that be with us are more than they that be with
them." " We are besieged by goodness." God has beset us !

^ When I was a very little boy I knew my father loved me.
I took it as a matter of course ; but I did not see that he had me
^William Law, An Earnest and Serious Answer.

I50 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD

in mind very much. When I was very little I thought houses
and clothes and food and money were a matter of course, and I
did not know anybody worked very hard to provide them for me.
It takes a child quite a while to know that these ever-present
necessaries are not free for the using like air for breathing, but
that they cost somebody a great deal of sweat and anxiety.
When I grew older I knew of course that father did it all — the
home and food and clothes and money ; but I did not know how
much he did it for me. I saw but little of him, I heard him
talk only a little. He was away and so busy and all wrapped up
in his farm and mill and cattle and horses. That was his business
and care. I was just incidental. Then I grew up to adult life
and I saw it all as it was. He did not think about anything but
his children. His mind was only a little on his farm. It was on
his home. He did not care for his business except as it ministered
to his family. His business was fatherhood ; his farm was only
the incident. He was laying his plans ahead. If the children
were hungry, there was bread. If winter came, there -were clothes.
When they were old enough, there was a teacher ready for them.
When temptation came to do wrong, there was also close at hand
an enticement to do good. Once he was sick, and he thought, and
we all thought, he was going to die. I heard him talking to
mother and grandfather, laying out all his business plans, and I
heard him say over and over : " That money is not to be touched
beforehand. It is there to take Nancy to college." He even
spoke of the after years and said : " When the girls marry, I want
them to have so and so." Child that I was, I began to realize
that father carried us all on his heart, and that in his plans he
thought not only of the present, but took in all the future years.
He really with his care and foresight "beset me behind and
before." 1

1. " Thou hast beset me behind." God stands between us and
our enemies in the rear. He defends us from the hostility of our
own past. He does not cut us away from our yesterdays. Con-
sequences are not annihilated; their operations are changed.
They are transformed from destructives into constructives. The
sword becomes a ploughshare; the implement of destruction
becomes an agent of moral and spiritual culture. The Lord
"besets me behind," and the sins of yesterday no longer send
their poisoned swords into my life. They are changed into the
ministers of a finer culture, nourishing godly sorrow, and humility,

> N. M. Waters.

PSALM cxxxix. 5 151

and meekness and self-mistrust. The failures and indiscretions of
yesterday are no longer creatures of moral impoverishment and
despair. He " besets me behind," and they become the teachers
of a quiet wisdom and well-proportioned thought.

^ When you reflect that your evil thoughts and dispositions
as well as acts all lie naked and open before the Eye of God, even
though they may have escaped the view of man, is this a subject
of satisfaction, or of dissatisfaction ? Would you have it other-
wise if you could, and hide them from Him also ? The Christian
hates sin, and finding that neither his own nor any other human
eye can effectually track it out in him, while he knows it to be
the true and only curse and pest of the universe, must rejoice
to think that there is One from whom it cannot lie hid — One
who will weigh his own case, which he may feel to be to him
unfathomable, in the scales of perfect justice and boundless
mercy.^

2. " And before." God comes between us and the enemy that
troubles us from to-morrow, the foe that lies ambushed in futurity
and disturbs the peace of to-day. And so He deals with our fears
and anxieties, and repeats the miracle of transformation, and
changes them from swords into ploughshares. He changes de-
structive anxiety into a constructive thoughtfulness. He converts
a lacerating fretfulness into an energetic contentment. He trans-
forms an abject fear into a holy reverence. He takes the terror
out of to-morrow, and enables us to live and labour in a fruitful
calm.

When thunders roll
And lightnings slash the sky,
God of the Elements
Stand by.

When warring worlds
Make men in thousands die,
God of the Battle-field
Stand by.

When terrors lurk
And hearts in anguish cry,
God of humanity
Stand by.

* Letters on Church and Religion of W, E. Gladstone, ii. 159.

152 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD

When storm blasts rage
And lives in peril lie,
God of the Universe
Stand by.

When life ebbs low

And death is drawing nigh,

God of Eternity

Stand by.i

3. "And laid thine hand upon me." When God lays His
hand upon us, it means manifold blessing.

(1) His hand is a restraining hand. — One of the hardest tasks
of parental love is to correct, to restrain. For is it not strange
that a child who comes into life so pure from God should hold
within it the possible germ of future wrong ! The father, watch-
ing with proper pride the wonderful growth of thought and
passion and will, is fearful of the day when first his child will
follow evil. So long as that day is a day delayed, laughter and
joy fill the home. But, in a moment, the germ of evil starts
into life. It grows from less to more, until one day rebellion
oversweeps the prentice soul, and the glamour of heaven is
gone. A passion of anger shakes the child to the very founda-
tion of its being. It is the first good-bye to innocence. Then
come correction and punishment and restraint. A father's strong
arms hold the little body in check, as in the grip of an iron
vice. The very touch of love in such a moment irritates. For
anger maddens every souL But there the father sits, in stern
silence, holding his child in restraint, until he has gained the
mastery. And when the passion has spent itself, then come
floods of tears from the poor little penitent soul as he lays his
conquered head upon his father's breast.

^ The great American orator Daniel Webster, being asked
what was his greatest thought, ^replied, " The greatest thought
that ever entered my mind was that of my personal responsibility
to a personal God." In a famous speech he expanded the thought :
" There is no evil that we cannot either face or flee from, but the
consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us
ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity. If we take to ourselves
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the

* L. Leigh, The White Gate and Other Poems, 40.

PSALM cxxxix. 5 153

sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our
happiness or our misery. If we say that darkness shall cover us,
in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.
We cannot escape their power nor fly from their presence. They
are with us in this life, will be with us at its close, and, in that
sense of inconceivable solemnity which lies yet farther onward,
we shall still find ourselves surrounded by the consciousness of
duty to pain us wherever it has been violated, and to console us
so far as God has given us grace to perform it."

If you would see the same principle in life, open your Shake-
speare; imagine yourself on Bosworth field, before the tents of
Eichard and of Eichmond; hear the ghosts as they rise and
speak. At the door of Eichard's tent —

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow !

Think, how thou stab'dst me in my prime of youth

At Tewksbury: despair, therefore, and die!

At Eichmond's tent —

Be cheerful, Eichmond; for the wronged souls
Of butcher'd princes fight in thy behalf:
King Henry's issue, Eichmond, comforts thee.

On Eichard's own confession —

0 coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me! . . .
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd
Came to my tent; and every one did threat
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Eichard.

Ghosts all, yet speaking in the voice of reality. Conscience
wears the form of a haunting fiend as well as of a guiding friend.
Yet it is no haunting fiend. " Thou hast beset me . . . and laid
thine hand upon me." " I will not leave thee, nor forsake thee."

The promise is fulfilled as truly in the condemning voice of
conscience as in our conviction of God's power and peace.^

(2) The hand suggests the ministry of guidance, — That is a most
suggestive word, constantly in the book of the prophet Isaiah:
" And the Lord said unto me with a strong hand." Speech by
strong graspings ! Suggestion by grips ! Guidance by the
creation of a mighty impulse ! The Lord declared His will unto
the prophet Isaiah by implanting in his life the sense of a tre-
mendous imperative, a terrific " must," a consciousness which the

» F. Ealand, The Spirit of Life, 55.

154 THE ENCOMPASSING GOD

prophet expressed under the symbol of the grasp of a "strong
hand." " Thy right hand shall guide me."

^ There is surely nothing remote or obscure in the theme of
God's guidance. It is relevant and immediate to everybody. We
differ in many things and in many ways ; we differ in age and in
calling, in physical fitness and in mental equipment ; we differ in
knowledge and accomplishments; we are greatly different in
temperament, and therefore in the character of our daily strife.
But in one thing we are all alike — we are pilgrims travelling
between life and death, on an unknown road, not knowing how
or when the road may turn ; not knowing how or when it may
end ; and we are in urgent need of a Greatheart who is acquainted
with every step of the way. We are all in need of a leader
who will be our guide by the •* waters of rest," and also in the
perilous ways of the heights.^

(3) The hand suggests the ministry of soothing and comfort —
The nurse lays her cool hand upon the burning brow of her patient,
and he exclaims, " How lovely that is ! " And when we come into
a sudden crisis in life, and are tempted to become feverish, and
" heated hot with burning fears," the Lord lays His cooling hand
upon us, and we grow calm again. " And Jesus touched her, and
the fever left her."

^ Dr. Miller never forgot the universal need of comfort. " We
forget how much sorrow there is in the world," he one day re-
marked. " Why, there are hearts breaking all about us. I have
made it a rule of my ministry never to preach a sermon without
giving some word of comfort to the sorrowing. In every congre-
gation there is sure to be some soul hungering for consolation. I
spent the afternoon of Wednesday with two or three sore sufferers.
In conversation with them I spoke freely of their trials and their
comforts. . . . Comfort is one of life's best blessings. Even the
comfort of earthly friends is soothing and sweet. But the real
comfort which the Holy Spirit brings to the heart of the Christian
movu'ner is infinitely better. ... It is better to go into the furnace
and get the image of Christ out of the fire, than to be saved from
the fire and fail of the blessed likeness." *

^ J. H. Jowett, Things that Matter Must, 111.

2 J. T. Faiis, Jesus and I are Friends: Life of Dr. J. Ji. Miller, 102.

The Searcher of Hearts.

XS5

Literature.

Black (H,), Christ's Service of Love, 158.

Bradley (C), Sermons, ii. 337.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 490.

Garbett (E.), Experiences of the Inner Life, 106.

Hamilton (J.), Faith in God, 78.

Joynt (R. C), Liturgy and Life, 125.

Keble, (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Lent to Passion-tide, 253.

Kemble (C), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 43.

Mackennal (A.), Christ's Healing Touch, 45.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Psalms li.-cxlv., 360.

„ „ The Wearied Christ, 170.

Moore (E. W.), Life Transfigured, 87.
Mountain (J.), Steps in Consecration, 13.
Slater (W. F,), Limitations Human and Divine, 97.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 903.
Stephen (R.), Divine and Human Influence, i. 262,
Thackeray (F. St. J.), Sermons Preached in Eton College Cluifel, 120.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), ix. (1872), No. 775.
Voysey (C), Sermons, iv. (1881), No. 40.
Walker (A. H.), Thinking about It, 1.
Watkinson (W. L.), The Fatal Barter, 95.
Wilkinson (J. B)., Mission Sermons, ii. 152,
Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 105.

15«

The Searcher of Hearts.

Search me, O God, and know my heart :

Try me, and know my thoughts :

And see if there be any way of wickedness in me,

And lead me in the way everlasting.— Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24.

1. No intellectual man has ever dared to despise this poem, which
has been called " the crown of all the psalms," and its teaching
has had to be reckoned with by all schools of thought for many
centuries. It is one of those pieces of literature which Bacon said
should be "chewed and digested." There is much food for the
intellect here ; but to every man who is anxious about the culture
of his spirit we would say : " Test your heart by this psalm. If
your heart is of steel, it will be attracted by its teaching, as by a
magnet ; if you find nothing in it to move you to reverence, wonder,
penitence, and prayer, be sure that your heart is not true, that
you are in a morally perilous condition."

2. The Psalmist sets forth in poetry what theology calls the
doctrine of the Divine Omniscience. He believes in Jehovah, the
God of all the earth, and therefore believes in a Providence so
universal that nothing is missed. It is not an intellectual dogma
to him, but a spiritual intuition. It is not stated as an abstraction
of thought, but flows from the warm personal relation between
God and man, which is the great revelation of the Bible. God's
providence is everywhere, but it does not dissipate itself in a mere
general supervision of creation. It is all-seeing, all-surrounding,
all-embracing, but it is not diffused in matter and dispersed through
space. It extends — and this is the wonder of it — to the individual :
0 Lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me.

3. The practical ethical thought suggested to the Psalmist by
such a conception is the question, How can God, the pure and
hoJy One, with such an intimate and unerring knowledge, tolerate

»S7

158 THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

wicked men ? He feels that God cannot but be against evil, no
matter what appearances seem to suggest that God does not care.
The doom of evil must be certain ; and so the Psalmist solemnly
dissociates himself from the wicked men who hate and blaspheme
God. And the conclusion is simply and humbly to throw open the
heart and soul to God, accepting the fact that He cannot be
deceived, praying God to search him and purify him and lead him.
" Search me, 0 God, and know my heart : try me, and know my
thoughts : and see if there be any way of wickedness in me, and
lead me in the way everlasting."

*fj In the general reform of conventual and monastic life, the
Abbey of Port Koyal had set a striking example. Behind its
cloistered walls were gathered some of the purest and most devoted
women of France, under the strict rule of M^re Ang61ique Arnauld.
The spiritual directions of St. Francois de Sales, who loved the
Port-Eoyalists, had tempered firmness with gentleness, and given
a charm to the pursuit of personal holiness ; the Petites Ecoles of
the abbey rivalled the educational establishments of the Jesuits.
But St. Cyran, who succeeded Francois de Sales as spiritual
director, was suspected of heresy, and Port Eoyal was involved in
the charge. Persecution fell upon the community. It was to a
psalm that they appealed. "The sisters of Port Eoyal," says
Blaise Pascal (and his own sister was one of the first victims of
the persecution), " astonished to hear it said that they were in the
way of perdition, that their confessors were leadhig them to Geneva
by teaching them that Jesus Christ was neither in the Eucharist
nor at the right hand of God, and knowing that the charge was
false, committed themselves to God, saying with the Psalmist,
' See if there be any way of wickedness in me.' " ^

The Searching of God.

1. "^jg Psalmist -realized-^^hatiie, could not thoroughly search
himself. We have all of us tendencies and inclinations which we
cannot gauge and do not know the force or the power of. We
have depths and abysses in our natures which no human measuring
line can fathom. Our souls are so disordered and disturbed by
the crossing of many varied feelings, high and low, clashing and
1 R. E. Protliero, The Psalms in Human Life, 214.

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24 159

fretting against each other, good thoughts mingled with so much
that is base, pure high feelings with so much that is low and
degraded. Wa_have_Jn3S_i0Jiietimes jp^haps_mor^^ good thaiLW^
r.eiLliza,-or-jnDi£_eviI^ than jwe ever guessed, Xheje, jg in us, not
only, our sinfuLacts^but also a deep, spirit oi wickedness, a mystery,
of evil, which no human power can comprehend. Said the prophet j
trji,ly>^" The-iieart is deceitful above all things, and desperately^y
\yicked,: ,wlKL,.ca.n_know it?" !]^,jojae^ can. Not even qux-
efilvea, who -think we know jQ.urselye^ well. We do not kno,w
what is in us, what powers_.Q£_capabilities we hava for ^npd or
for evil.

^Who made the heart, 'tis He alone

Decidedly can try us;
[He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias. y

\ One of the precepts which Thales the great philosopher, who .^_ ^ .
lived about the same time as Josiah king of Judali, inculcated V' ^"^'j
was, "Knc^w thvself." and it is a precept full of the highest sense ^*^
and wisdom. It was regarded by the ancients as a duty of para-
mount importance, and received by them with all the authority of
a Divine command. It is not as a matter of curiosity, but of
deepest necessity, that we should have a thorough acquaintance
with the state in which we are before God, and should try to see
ourselves and to estimate ourselves, not as others do, but as God
does, for it is a sul^pcJi- on which we are apt to make great and ^(,/r
dajiger,Qjas_iaiaiakes,_andit,i§,one_oi which many are in complete^ —-^
ignoiance.^

2. TbftJPRalmiRt is snrp. that Gnd Jia^ pftrfpf^kmWIgd^rft nf
hjjp. Hft jR_gg_certainjnf G^pxl as hft ia of^his^ own ftYJshgn^pj
indeed it is not too much to say that it is only as he is conscious
of being searched and known by God — only as he is overwhelmed
by contact with a Spirit which knows him better than he knows
himself — that he rises to any adequate sense of what his own
being and personality mean. IJe-is-ifiYfialgdJa Jiimseli hj^ God!s
8£ai«h4JiaJknows_him8elL through God. Speaking practically —
and in religion everything is practical — God alone can overcome
atheism, and this is how He overcomes it. He does not put within
our reach arguments which point to theistic conclusions ; He gives

^ R. Stephen, Divine and Human Influence, i. 262.

i6o THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

us the experience which makes this psalm intelligible, and forces
us also to cry, " (^JLord^ thou JhAstsearchedjnei and kQOj?mm

^ It is a fact well known to seamen that objects under water,

such as shoals and sunken rocks, become visible, or more visible,

when viewed from a height ; and it is customary at sea, when a

sunken object is suspected of lying in a vessel's course, but cannot

be seen from the deck, to send a man aloft, when the higher he

can climb the mast the farther will his vision penetrate beneath

the waves. From the top of a lofty cliff the depth is seen better

still; whilst the elevation of a balloon enables the spectator to

see most perfectly beneath the surface, and to detect the sunken

mines, torpedoes, and the like which may be concealed there.

ii Now, just as there is an optical reason why the depth is best

; penetrated from the height, so there is a moral reason why the

holy God best kncvs the plagues and perils of the human heart.

, He who from the pure heaven of eternal light and purity looks

V down into the depths of the heart is cognizant of its defects long

*" before they report themselves in the creature-consciousness.^

% Colonel Seely, shortly before he resigned office as Secretary
of State for War in the spring of 1914, unfolded in the House of
Commons the Supplementary Army Estimates ; and, speaking of
the vote for the Army Air Service, he gave a striking instance of
the range of vision from a height. From an aeroplane up 5000
'' feet in the air one could see, he explained, quite clearly every
detail of the landscape. An airman could perceive from that not
only the roads and the hedges beneath, but, for instance, whether
there were two horses or one attached to a cart going along a road.
Persons could be seen walking in the streets of a town. " How
easy then," concluded the War Secretary, " to see any troops !
Thus the commander of an army without aeroplanes — other things
being equal — is doomed if faced by a force with aeroplanes, for
every movement of the enemy's troops, except at night or in a fog,
can be watched and reported by the air scouts."

3. The,.^galffii8t \3[M.aaJi5fiM-^^»Q^J=lP-^<^ gjGaiT.h him, fixlly,
f airlyjiS iiaeaili^^^ Xha-Wiard JH^b is rpnrjp.red " ^£arch."-is a..
Viv.^ very emphajic and picturesque Q.ae> It m^an^ to, dig deep. Qod.
'^* ' ' ■ ijL£Ifty-fii -^8 it_^r£*.to_make-a-aeyfttioa into the Psalmisi,.^!nd lay /
barejiis inmost nature^ as mfin dg ia.aj;ail way .cutting, la^tjiier
layer, _going pyftr dfipppj^' down tjill Jiha. hed-tock— is -j^acl^d.
'''Search .ijie "— fUgJnjY^ t^^p, hrincr t,]]R dopj)-l^p[T pa^jia to ligfht—
' W. L. Watkiuson, The Fatal Barlcr, 101.

^

'V-'S*,.

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24 161

" ajid know myJieait-!.' ; thp- <^p.p|ivf? 9t "^y r^^^'J^^^^'ty. T"y '^vw^^f
sell

Tbia» pxaver is algo a,Ti expression of absolutip wi1Hngness>-ta^
^^'jteOL^Jjo the^searching process. God i^ ^yftpygffftnt^d, i,n t.hp. tp.xt
as seeking into Ji,e--seGf^§^xiijiga^^ Ctod-jaay '**'^

]^iiqw. but that tlie^man isayLkllDWc By His Spirit He will come
into the innermost corners of our nature, if this prayer is a real
expression of our desire. And there the illumination of His
presence will flash light into all the dark corners of our experience
and of our personality.

11 Mfiiyjiay applaud or reyile^nd make a man think.c[ifferei3tly
of himself , ijwt Hejudggth of j.jman accordidgJiQ^iis SSfi£fiiygaIk-"^
UiiSL.dMei^*' is-tiie A^ork of_ self-exammation ! Even to state to
you, imperfectly, my own mincf, I found to be no easy matter.
Nay, ^t... u£a>ul -jayv ," I.Jadge ^jmfc-mina^own selt-ior he^Jhat
jU-dgfitilL-Tne m |,fie-XQ^d," That is, though he was not conscious oT
any allowed sin, yet he was not thereby justified, fnrj^pd mighf.
^roeim-sometking^of Hdl^h* kej^s noL^ware. How needful
then the prayer of the Psalmist, " Search me, O God, and try my
heart, and see if there be any evil way in me." *

./

II.

The Tests to which we aee Subjected.

1. \^e are searehed_and knawn— by th£.MlM2JLandjt^dy pjHssinSL ^^"- ^
qfJJjL&^ye^irs. — There is a revealing power in the flight of time, just \v"^+'
because time is the minister of God. In heaven there will be no ^^^
more time ; there will be no more need of any searching ministry.
There we shall know even as we are known, in the burning and
shining of the light of God. But here, where the light of God is
dimmed and broken, we are urged forward through the course
of years, and the light of the passing years achieves on earth what
the light of the Presence will achieve in glory. He^is-a wise father
wio kn_owsJiis child, but he is a wiser child who knows himself.
Tin tf^i^tec^ by actual contact wjti^ t.hp wnrlfl, wftjlrpniri niir drp.a.rn
^JhfiLBiinshiue- of Jhejuorning. -^^M^t^AJCjpJiies Jife with alUts
Jl^jidLxfi^lity, ivith^ pi Jh.?_lSarSj_and

* Life and Letters of tlte Bev. Hem'y Martyn, 28.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — II

-s*.^

i62 THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

Wg^t^JMLr^Lndjyi the swift_flicrlit ot,tinie^au4j^-y, " Q Xi2tdiJhou
hast, searched lae, and J^gLOwn jpe." We may not have achieved
anything splendid. Our life may have moved along in quiet
routine, not outwardly different from the lives of thousands. Yet,
however dull and quietly uneventful, God has so ordered the flight
of time for us that we know far more about ourselves to-night than
we knew in the upland freshness of the morn. Brought into touch
with duty and with man, we have begun to see our limitations.
"We know in^jieasnre what we-iiajinaL-do ; thank God, we know
in a measure what we can do. And underneath it all we have
discerned the side on which our nature leans away to heaven, and
the other side on which there is the door that opens on to the
filthiness of hell. It does not take any terrible experience to
reach the certainty of power and weakness. The common days,
which make the common years, slowly and inevitably show it.
So by the pressure of evolving time — and it is God, not we,
who so evolves it — fg»j Jjetter^jy^^Jpr worse.=^ia[e com^-to- .say^ " Q
Lord, thoujiast-searched mCj and kjiimn me." -

^ 1 Jan. 1878. Marine Parade, Brighton, 6 a.m. When one
thinks of the immensity of time and of the Christian hope that
there is endless existence before us, one is perplexed that this
infinity of time should take its character from a few years that
seem to bear no proportion to it. One observes, however, that in
the time here by far the greatest portion is determined by certain
hours or it may be minutes.

In itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years —

says Byron, and certain it is that all our lives are under the
influence of moments when fresh convictions dawned on us, or
when we made some important resolution, or when we passed ,
through some special trial. With moat of us the-grea^r paiji o£-
onr liff} Reemf^ merely wagted^ We eat, drink, and sleep, join in
meaningless chit-chat, pay calls and the like. Others get through
an immense amount of work ; but at times we have glimpses which
show us that life consists neither in chit-chat nor in work, and
that even the latter needs something in it, but not of it, before it
can be good for anything " in the kingdom of heaven." Perhaps
the scanty moments we give to prayer may in importance be the
chief part of our existence.^

' Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, 70.

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24 163

2. fjOd sftf^frchfiS iia-Jiy thA^rpfR'pryn.a'ihi.mip.st JTp. Jgyg ii.ptyifi. ifs —Jt.

is_jD^QuiL.dirties_^and notjin^ that _the.-irjuLe .self is

searched^ancLkno\jn^ Think of those servants in the parable who
received the talents. Could you have gauged their character
before they got the talents ? Were they not all respectable and
honest and seemingly worthy of their master's confidence ? But
to one of the servants the master gave five talents, to another
two, and to another one, and what distinguished and revealed the
men was the use they made of their responsibility. They were
not searched by what they had to suffer ; the men were searched
by what they had to do. They were revealed by what their
master gave, and by the use they made of what they got. And
so is it with all of us to whom God has given a task, a post, a
talent — it is not only a gift to bless our neighbour ; it is a gift to
reveal us to ourselves.

^ See, I hold a sovereign in my hand. It appears to bear the
image and superscription of the King. That is mereljL-an op^cal
ill^i^ It bears my oivn image and supeHcription. I have
earnedTlt, and it is mine. But now that it is mine, the trouble
begins. For that sovereign becomes part of myself and will
henceforth represent a pound's worth of me ! If I am a bad man,
I shall spend it in folly, and accelerate the forces that make for
the world's undoing. If I am a bad man, that is to say, it will be
a bad sovereign, however truly it may seem to ring. If I am a
good man, I shall spend it in clean commerce, and enlist it among
the forces that tend to the uplift of my brothers. Yes, gold is
very good if we are very good, and very bad if we are very bad.
Here is the song of the sovereign —

Dug from the mountain-side, washed in the glen.
Servant am I or the master of men ;

Steal me, I curse you;

Earn me, I bless you;
Grasp me and hoard me, a fiend shall possess you;

Lie for me, die for me;

Covet me, take me,
Angel or devil, I am what you make me ! ^

3. God-searchea us \y hrirwiai^ uemJ^ue7Uie&lp '^eq.rujinn

Zt^s._T^oubles and temptat^ns^ are p;re|t diapQV(^rPrt"/,J^""^f "

^ F. W. Boreham, MonrUains in the Mist, 62.

i64 THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

chara^t^^. Our passions and special inclinations may lie like
some minerals, far down, and we may bore long and find no trace
of their existence, but by and by we may pierce deeper, and a
thick seam of evil may be found. Or our nature may, like a break-
water, stand long, and seem secure, unharmed by many a gale, but
some fiercer storm, some stronger onslaught of temptation, may
overthrow it, or some single stone may be dislodged, or some
joint weakened, and the sea works its way in, and the whole is
upset, dashed, and pounded to ruin. So you may resist long,
and come unscathed through much evil, but it comes with
fiercer power at some time, or it dashes upon you suddenly or
unexpectedly, advancing upon you not like the long roll of the
ocean, with steady force, but with a quick impact, a sudden
surprise — as temptation came to Peter — and your power of
resistance is destroyed.

, ^ Just as engineers are not satisfied with respect to the
soundness and durability of iron girders or links of ships' cables
merely because these look well, but proceed to test them by
pressure, and ascertain the amount of strain they will bear, and
the weight they will sustain, so by the rough handling of the
world's vexations and by the strain of trouble and sorrow
you must be tried, to show what you really are: whether
your temper patiently endures this provocation, whether your
pride will submit to that mortification, your vanity to that
slight, your passions to that force of temptation, your faith
to that severe disappointment, your love to that heavy sacri-
\^fice.

In the making of great iron castings, through some defect in
the mould, portions of air may lurk in the heart of the iron, and
cavities like those of an honey-comb may be formed in the
interior of the beam, but the defects and flaws may be effectively
concealed under the outer skin ; when, however, it is subjected to
a severe strain it gives way. So under tligr^tresa^iif soifte great
trial, the hollowness of the„ o^turpi, max-ba -JCgy^l pd aud^ sesfot
faulis.JJjd e\il^exposed, and the man appfiai:iJJlJ^vhat_P-eQple^ay
is a changed chaas^ctei;, ]ji.j:fiality that isi his. trufi_ character
If metal be real iron, the blast of the furnace will temper it
into steel, and if there is reality and truth in the nature, j^tial
wilL<ie!XelopLita.-finer -fi^ualitiea ; but if these do not existr-trial
w.illouly^ expose that ,jiatiire's inherent UaUnefia-aiid— iaake-J4

^ R. Stephen, Divine arid Human Influence, i. 285.

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24 165

4. Qo^, Ui^*^n Jis ^y hnlfj.ing up. tq ^^^ tf^p.^ mirror (f anaihji.r'a life^
— We never know ourselves until we see ourselves divested of all
the trappings of self-love. It was thus that God dealt with David,
when he had so terribly sinned. /For all the depth and the a^4
grandeur of his character, David was strangely blind to his own t<,
guilt. But then came Nathan with his touching story qf the man
who had been robbed of his ewe lamb, and all that was best in
David was afire at the abhorrent action of that robber. '/

Especially when we draw near to Christ, who knows what is
in all of us, and whose eye could read and single out the traitor
whom no one suspected ; when, too, He is lobking at us and
scanning our deepest hearts, reading in them the love we have to
Him and the faith we have in Him, or detecting the treachery
and perfidy that may lurk within us, surely it is right that we
should ask Him to search us and try us and let us know and see
ourselves as He knows and sees us. Surely we should ask Him to
purify our hearts from every evil thought and feeling, and so to
fill them with His love that when He asks us, as He asked Peter,
" Lovest thou me ? " we may be able to say truly, " Lord, thou
knowest all things ; thou knowest that I love thee."

^ Bishop Westcott preached what was to prove his last sermon
in Durham Cathedral on the Saturday preceding his death. It
was the annual service of the Durham miners, who came in their
thousands to hear the prelate that shortly before had successfully
acted as peacemaker in the great North of England coal strike.
The Bishop's address has a pathos of its own, since it was his last,
and apparently felt by the speaker himself to be his last public
utterance. The discourse was as beautiful as it was touching and
impressive. Brief, yet complete, and instinct with love, it reveals
the man and indicates the secret of his power. The closing words
were —

" Since it is not likely that I shall ever address you here
again, I have sought to tell you what I have found in a long and
laborious life to be the most prevailing power to sustain right
endeavour, however imperfectly I have yielded myself to it — even
the love of Christ ; to tell you what I know to be the secret of a
noble life, even glad obedience to His will. I have given you a
watchword which is fitted to be the inspiration, the test, and the
support of untiring service to God and man : the,lavLJ^JJJ},risLcQvy-.
stnmLe^us." ^

^ Life and Letters qf Brooke Foss Westcott, ii. 394.

i66 THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

IIL

The Purpose in View.

1. Tjhe^uipDse of this searching is thakwe may be dfiljyered
ifODojour own jra;;^gf Jile. " See iOhere be any way of.syicked-
nessjnjne." The Psalmist jecogfiizes -that huinan_Ufe isjj^eier-
minedfj'om_ within^ The " wa^" j_sjtot^'^n/^_us^ How often
do we see this ! A youth is set in the right path, every assistance
is secured for him, every encouragement is given him to pursue
it ; but he soon breaks away from this, forms other habits, adopts
other companions, pursues an altogether different life. He does
not follow the path that was opened up to him from the outside,
but elects one already traced in his heart. We popularly say of
such a wilful soul, "He took his own way, followed his own
course." A modern cry calls upon us to " fulfil ourselves." That
really means to work out our own fancies, tastes, and passions ;
to propose our own ideals, be ruled by self-will, take counsel of
the pride and passion of our own hearts, chase our own phantoms.
But if everybody should " fulfil " himself, it would mean pande-
monium ; it would be the working out of ignorance, egotism, and
lust. This is precisely what the Psalmist deprecates. He urgently
pleads for deliverance from himself ; from the poisonous particle,
the diseased fibre, the false substance and quality which may
exist latent within him, waiting for the stimulation of circum-
stance, opportunity, and association.

(1) 0\^r own way is a way ot ejtj^tii^js^. Some would translate
these words, " any way of idols in me." It signifies the vanity,
the unreality, the delusiveness of the objects on which the natural
man fixes his ambition and hope. We sometimes say of a thing,
" There is nothing in it." We may say this of wealtlLJioaoiir,
pleasure^Jame ; if we make idols of them, we know that an idol
is~nothing in the world. If we follow the desires and devices of
our own hearts, we walk in a vain show and disquiet ourselves in
vain.

(2) Our own way is a way of j^^. " See if there ia any j^ay
of grievousness i^me." The. path of self -fulfilment is hard ^anxd
bitter. If the roses in the broad road of sensual pleasure, sordid
gain, and worldly pride are red, there is no wonder ; enough blood

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24 167

has been shed to make them so. In the forests of South America,
where gorgeous orchids dazzle the eyes and gay blossoms carpet
the earth, are also creepers furnished with formidable thorns
known as "the devil's fishing-hooks"; and as these trail in-
sidiously on the ground, their presence is revealed only by the
wounded foot that treads upon them. How closely this pictures
the wayward, sensual, worldly life !

(3) Our own way is a way of degtruntym^ It joes no.ti lead to a
goal ,QlJa,sting_felicity, tiut. desijfiiidsantaji^;kneasjind^espair.
""Ther-e is aj,vaj_which seeffiSth rigjjt .luyiaa^a^jiJaut^Jlifi^eiiA
thereoLaJ^the^way^joi'^ath." That is the path and doom of
self-fulfilment. We do not know why Solomon, in another place,
exactly repeats this warning, unless, perhaps, because it is so
immensely significant, and yet so likely to be overlooked. So,
then, we must pray that^od will ""V-^V"dnn iif=^ f.n nnvRf^Wa^ • /
that we may not be permitted to work out the lurking naughtiness
of our heart.

\ Let a man persevere in prayer and watchfulness to the day
of his death, yet he will never get to the bottom of his heart.
Though he know more and more of himself as he becomes more
conscientious and earnest, still the full manifestation of the secrets
there lodged is reserved for another world. And at the last day
who can tell the affright and horror of a man who lived to himself
on earth, indulging his own evil will, following his own chance
notions of truth and falsehood, shunning the cross and the reproach
of Christ, when his eyes are at length opened before the throne of
God, and all his innumerable sins, his habitual neglect of God, his
abuse of his talents, his misapplication and waste of time, and the
original unexplored sinfulness of his nature, are brought clearly
and fully to his view ? Nay, even to the true servants of Christ
the prospect is awful. " The righteous," we are told, " will scarcely
be saved." Then will the good man undergo the full sight of his
sins, which on earth he was labouring to obtain, and partly
succeeded in obtaining, though life was not long enough to learn
and subdue them all. Doubtless we must all endure that fierce
and terrifying vision of our real selves, that last fiery trial of the
soul before its acceptance, a spiritual agony and second death to
all who are not then supported by the strength of Him who died
to bring them safe through it, and in whom on earth they have
believed.^

^ J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, i. 48.

i68 THE SEARCHER OF HEARTS

^«ajE^ " T<pM mP.ioibRJiKay p.vp,rlafi|^'4- The greatest test of a
man's life is with regard to leadership. Who shall lead ? Shall it
be the world, or self, or God ? There is no advance until that is
settled ; yet not to have settled it is to have decided in favour of
self and sin : " He that is not with me is against me." It is a
vital question, and presses for an instant response. This petition
obviously includes surrender and submission, and it is to be a
constant, continuous thing. It therefore rightly completes the
circle of the permanent, universal elements in religion. " JieLWAy
everlasijng,'' ^which_J£L.8QjieaiiliiMLy- iBJieipe©fced.-ija. Isaiah_2i£5y.
as " the vf^Y . of holinqgs." " an -IjjjgIui:a^"4ipon_ which no .unclean
thing shall walk. If^xj^ " t.h^ wayfaring men^ though fools, ^hall not
S?rjfeje£§lai_- . • and <;.h(^j;|pRnmp.d' o| thP. T.nrf| ^hal] rgfaim J^r^^

QomeJoZiQfi^.mtb. songs and everlasting joy upon tht^i^- hp^^g."
has_bifi^L_^ade clear in., Jesus ChrisL. and He will 'lead us in
triumph^ along _thi§. wajMbo wards J,he everlasting^on. _ JL^t^us _,
^^elcom^_the leadexallip.. of Him vdioTiarconie_to ''pr^sent-4ig
faultless befojre the presence of l^is g],ory vyi[)b eyf-eqfjjng jpy "

f There is a story told of a good old preacher in Wales, in
those early days when preachers used to go about Wales from one
end of the country to the other. The custom among Christians
who realized their privileges and responsibilities was, when a man
had preached the Gospel on one side of a mountain, and had to
preach it the following night on the other side, that some kind
friend accompanied him a large part of the way, if not the whole
way, and thus showed him the path to take. But there were
some who begrudged this kindly service. The preacher of whom
I speak came on one occasion into contact with one of these. He
was a wealthy farmer in the district. The preacher stayed the
night at this man's house. On the following morning, when the
preacher was about to start, the farmer took out a bit of a slate
and traced on it the way over the mountain to the other side, and
said, " Now follow this. Here the road divides, and there a path
turns to the right," etc. etc. The good old man tried to follow it,
and, after making very many mistakes on the wild mountain,
succeeded at length in reaching his destination. Some time after
that he visited the same people a second time, and preaching from
one of those tender references of Paul to those who were so ready
to minister to him, significantly said, " Ah, these were a people
who, when Paul preached to them, and he had to cross a mountain

"Bd^

^^^\

PSALM cxxxix. 23, 24

169

in order to preach the next night, would not give him a map on a
slate, but would accompany him on the way and further him on
his journey." That is exactly it. There are snTinft_pf>Qp1p^ whn will
give YQu^aanap pn the slate,4p tell ^u hn^y fo ^jQ^ i.hrn^^gh \j^
and hn^yg;jg^^tp.rjh eaven.alj.. last. Th(;^y givPijnpj f\ fff^y ouJ'.IJttp.s
oFJI^^Jti^iS teacHng. or a Aew P^^g^ptg, of morality. Some are'_
esj2£fiiaJ]y foad..of.refery.iQg._You .to_ the Sermon oj, ihtLllau^t,
adding that-^rjJoildQ not neeJ anyihmg-_eka>-as you faavf;^ oi;il7.i.n
tra,p,p^ wh^t ^^lirjfitijhiaf JHLgM-tjbP^^. What^^ful men need IS not
a^_giajp_^nly, although |ihaj} J^g tramT'b^^yTvn^^L^" T^^
Psalmist felt thaj what ,^,^waiite a guidg, who .ffiould take

him by thjB hand, a-ndjiijjd^j^^^ up when hp w?^ rg^dy , jj^ ftnll,
aloflg th£_rjj^gged joumey^i^"9nJhe^
" Lpad me in the way eyedas'ting." ^

]j 0 might it please God that we should little regard the
course of the way we tread, and have our eyes fixed on Him who
conducts us, and on the blessed country to which it leads ! What
should it matter to us whether it is by the desert or by the
meadiDwe we go, if God is with us and we go into Paradise ? ^

* D. Davies, Talks with Men, Women and Children, iii. 495.
' St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Letters.

PJ'

The Good Providence of God.

«r«

Literature.

Aitchison (J.), The Children's Own, 219.

Archibald (M. G.), Sundays at the Royal Military College, 73.

Kelman (J.), Ephemera Eternitatis, 332.

Ketcham (W. E.), in Thanksgiving Sermons, 288.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Psalms li.-cxlv., 385.

Matheson (G.), Sacred Songs, 49.

Pearse (M. G.), The Gospel for the Day, 179.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xiii. (1890), No. 48.

Wilkinson (J. B.), Mission Sermons, i. 95.

Christian World Pulpit, Ixxxiii. 385 (R. J. Campbell).

17.

The Good Providence of God.

Thou openest thine hand,

And satisfiest the desire of every living thing.— Ps. cxlv. i6.

SuKELY a delightful psalm — a psalm of great rejoicing for God's
goodness to man's weakness ; of the Lord's being " nigh," very
near to us ; of His abundant kindness, of His power and glory,
of His open hand, of His feeding the hungry. Surely a psalm to
make glad the heart ; a song for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
in the fiery torment of the fiery furnace ; a song for every living
thing because the Lord, the Lord God is with us. 0, all ye works
of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise Him, and magnify Him for
ever ! He openeth His hand and satisfieth the desire of every
living thing.

I

God's Pensioners.

"Every living thing."

Life makes a claim on God, and whatever desires arise in the
living creature by reason of its life, God would be untrue to Him-
self, a cruel Parent, an unnatural Father, if He did not satisfy
them. We do not half enough realize the fact that the condescen-
sion of creation lies not only in the act of creating, but in the
willing acceptance by the Creator of the bonds under which He
thereby lays Himself, obliging Himself to see to the creatures that
He has chosen to make.

1. God's pensioners! How did He treat them when He
walked with them and talked with them in the days of His
earthly life? There was a day when the disciples came in the
wilderness to Jesus, saying, " This is a desert place, and now the

174 THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD

time is far passed : send them [the multitudes] away, that they
may go into the country round about, and into the villages, and
buy themselves bread." Four thousand men besides women and
children was a great family to provide for anywhere, and in such
a place as this it would never occur to the disciples that their
need could be supplied. Send them away — it was a perfectly
natural suggestion. Let them go and get their supper, for they
are hungry and it is getting late. And Jesus " answered and said
unto them, Give ye them to eat!* The disciples looked up in wonder
— what did the Master mean? Should they go and buy two
hundred pennyworth of bread ? Where was the money to come
from ? And where should they find so much bread to buy ? It
was trouble enough at best to find bread for wife and little ones at
home ; but here in the desert who could spread a table for ten
thousand hungry guests ? Give ye them to eat. It was the voice
of God. It was with the consciousness of Divine power that the
command was given. It was the impulse of the great bounty that
fed the world, the easy familiarity of One who was accustomed to
open His hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.

2. " Every living thing." What a family is this to be provided
for, each with its separate mystery of life, each with life to be
sustained, each to be adapted to the light and air, and the subtle
influences upon which life depends !

(1) Shall we go into the primeval forest and think of the
creatures that roam in its depths ? Shall we stand and let the
procession pass before us ?

^ If the forest has attractions for the huntsman, how much
more interesting it must be to the naturalist. What one who has
delighted the world for over fifty years thought of the Guiana
forest may be seen in Waterton's Wanderings. The enthusiasm
of the Yorkshire squire has probably never been surpassed. To
him the forest was something more than the awful solitude which
is the first impression it makes on a stranger — it was full of life.
The painter sees patches of colour in the landscape, but the
naturalist recognizes the objects which make up the scene. On
the sand-reef he distinguishes the footsteps of a jaguar and the
remains of his dinner, and can picture what has taken place in
the nigVit. A peccary left her hole in a hollow tree at nightfall to
feed under the saouari-nut trees. She is quietly cracking the

PSALM cxLV. i6 175

shells and mimching the oily kernels, when the great cat
suddenly pounces upon her, and she is torn to pieces and eaten.
Sitting on a hollow tree beside the creek, the naturalist sees a
thousand flowers and fruits floating down the stream. Now he
distinguishes a palm nut snatched under the water by a great fish,
or a shoal of small fry feeding on the yellow hog-plums which are
so conspicuous against the dark water. Now there is a splash as
an alligator comes out of the thicket and dives under, to come up
again some distance away, hardly distinguishable except to a
trained eye. This reminds us of the protective coloration of every
living thing in the forest. Protective contrivances are found in
every forest animal. Snakes are nearly invisible in the gloom,
notwithstanding their brilliant colours when played upon by the
sunlight. With so few atmospheric changes it might be supposed
that the tropical forest would give rise to little variation in
animals and plants, yet, on the contrary, it is here that natiu^e
runs riot, as it were. Nature has been lavish with her gifts. The
forest is densely populated — more so, in fact, than any city ever
was or could be. There is not room for one in a thousand of the
children born therein, so that the fight for standing room is like
that of a crowd at a fete. It follows, therefore, that every
possible contrivance to gain a position has been developed, and the
result is almost perfection. Every living thing is ever moving
forward, working towards an end which is unattainable —
perfection. But, although this object will never be achieved, the
results of the struggle bring it continually a little nearer, and
therefore cannot be otherwise than good. Nature does not take
care of the weaklings, she provides no asylums ; if some of her
creatures cannot work for a living they must make room for those
who can. Individuals are of little consequence as such, but
nevertheless as links in the endless chain they are of the greatest
importance. Guiana is pre-eminently a land of forest and stream,
and it has followed that both animal and vegetable kingdoms
have been developed to suit these conditions. Some are equally
at home on land, in the water, or on the trees, those that cannot
easily live in the flood being able to climb out of its reach. Then
we must also take into account the kinds of food procurable. The
interdependence of one animal on another, and these again upon
the seeds of trees and even on flowers, is so close, that we can
hardly conceive of their existing apart.^

(2) Shall we consider the fowls of the air, again a myriad form :
the eagle soaring in its height, the birds that fill the woods and
^ J. Rod way, In the Guiana Forest, 31.

176 THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD

valleys with their song, the great hosts of sea-fowl ? Who can
think of their numbers ?

^ From Cannara Francis went farther south, and east to
Bevagna. Brother Leo was his companion, and the sympathy
between them, the beauty of the ways bordered with flowers —
amongst them the delicate blue and white love-in-a-mist, which
fringes the hedgerows in June, blue cornflowers, rose-coloured
vetches, purple loose-strife, scarlet poppies, gay larkspurs and
sheets of feathery bedstraw — the twitter of birds upon the trees,
the fields ripe to the harvest, refreshed and uplifted his heart,
so that his joy welled over in song. Where the birds gathered he
paused, and, unalarmed, they clustered about his feet and on the
branches overhead. In an ecstasy of tenderness for his " little
brothers " he spoke to them of their Creator, whose care for them
deserved their love and praise. " For He has made you," he said,
" the noblest of His creatures ; He has given you the pure air for
a home : you need neither to sow nor to reap, for He cares for
you, He protects you, He leads you whither you should go." And
the birds rejoiced at his words, opening their wings and fluttering
and chirping as if to thank him for rating them so precious in
God's sight. Then moving amongst them, he blessed them and
went on his way.^

(3) Shall we go outside them to the world of plant life?
What endless diversity is here in the grass of the meadow, the
corn of the field, the crowded hedgerow, the tangled copse, the
leafy forest, the mossy rocks, the weeds that hide beneath the sea,
the flowers that fill the earth with beauty and the air with
fragrance, the great trees festooned with creepers !

^ The whole science of flowers to the thoughtful mind in these
days is full to the brim of the most delightful and suggestive poetry.
And how much better fitted is it now than ever before for the
illustration of moral and religious truth ! Science has anointed
our blind eyes with its own magic eye-salve, and enabled us
indeed to see men as trees walking. We see our own human
nature reflected in the nature of the flowers of the field in a
previously unknown way. We see the analogue of the mother's
bosom in the milky substance of the two cotyledons of the seed
for the primary nourishing of the young embryo which they
contain. We see the lover's joy in the spring blossoming of the
flowers, and the loveliness with which Nature then adorns her
bridal bower ; and we see our own selfishness in the spreading of

' A. M. Stoddart, Francis of Assist, 134.

PSALM cxLv. i6 177

the flat leaves of the daisy around its roots close to the earth, so
that no other plant may grow beside it, and it may get whatever
space and air and sunshine it needs for its own development. He
who considers the lilies how they grow, in the manner in which
recent science teaches us, and in the light which modern investi-
gation has shed upon their marvels and mysteries, will learn
lessons which will make him wiser and better. It has been
suggestively said that " the flower is the type of the universe,
and the lily of the field is solving over again all problems." It is
not perfect creation, complete all at once, that we see, but God
sowing seeds, making things to grow by outside circumstances and
living forces within ; slow, gradual evolution from the nebula to
the full orbed star, and from the chaotic star to the skilfully
ordered and richly furnished earth, fit to be man's dwelling-
place, and the scene of probation for immortal souls.*

II.

God's Open Hand.

*'Thou openest thine hand."

Now look from nature to nature's God — " Thou openest thine
hand, and satisfiest the desire of every living thing." God satisfies
the desires of every living thing. Our desires both lift us up and
set us down. Our desires mark us off from all other living
creatures. Where others have needs only, ours is this dignity —
we desire.

1. Desire — it is a dainty word. It were much that He should
satisfy the need, the want ; but He goes far beyond that. Pity is
moved to meet our need ; duty may sometimes look after our
wants ; but to satisfy the desire impKes a tender watchfulness, a
sweet and gracious knowledge of us, an eagerness to bless. God
is never satisfied until He has satisfied our desires.

^ Embodied life is ever seeking, and it must find, whether
embodied or disembodied. From the amoeba to the archangel all
forms and modes of life are on their way towards satiety ; every-
thing must reach its due fulfilment, though probably not on this
plane ; it would be a poor destiny that could complete itself on

^ Hugh Macmillan, ?%« Poetry of Plants, 9.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 12

178 THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD

earth. One wonders what the destiny of the lower creation is ;
but we may rest assured

That not a worm is clov'n in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.^

(1) What is the object of desire to a man who loves God ?
God. What is the object of desire to a righteous man ? Right-
eousness. And these are the desires which God is sure to fulfil to
us. Therefore there is only one region in which it is safe and
wise to cherish longings, and it is the region of the spiritual life
where God imparts Himself. Everywhere else there will be
disappointments — thank Him for them. Nowhere else is it
absolutely true that He will fulfil our desires. But in this region
it is. Whatever any of us desire to have of God, we are sure to
get. We open our mouths and He fills them. In the Christian
life desire is the measure of possession, and to long is to have.
And there is nowhere else where it is absolutely, unconditionally
and universally true that to wish is to possess, and to ask is to
have. There is, however, an eternal element in all desire, which,
ultimately, will find its fruition in the love of God.

^ Dear children, ye ought not to cease from hearing or declar-
ing the word of God because you do not alway live according to it,
nor keep it in mind. For inasmuch as you love it and crave after
it, it will assuredly be given unto you ; and you shall enjoy it for
ever with God, according to the measure of your desire after it.
St. Bernard has said: "Man, if thou desirest a noble and holy
life, and unceasingly prayest to God for it, if thou continue
constant in this thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without
fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death ; and if God
should not give it tliee then, thou shalt find it in Him in eternity :
of this be assured." Therefore do not relinquish your desire,
though it be not fulfilled immediately, or though ye may swerve
from your aspirations, or even forget them for a time. It were a
hard case if this were to cut you off for ever from the end of your
being. But when ye hear the word of God, surrender yourselves
wholly to it, as if for eternity, with a full purpose of will to retain
it in your mind and to order your life according to it ; and let it
sink down right deep into your heart as into an eternity. If

' R, J. Campbell.

PSALM cxLv. 1 6 179

afterward it should come to pass that you let it slip, and never
think of it again, yet the love and aspiration which once really
existed live for ever before God, and in Him ye shall find the fruit
thereof ; that is, to all eternity it shall be better for you than if
you had never felt them.^

(2) The thing we desire in every object of desire is greater
than we know ; it is greater than the object itself as that object
now is. God enlarges our soul by means of the desire, and will
give us vision by and by of the wonder and glory of the reality of
which we have all the time been in search, though only dimly
knowing what it was. The soul's desires are not illusory and
ephemeral ; they are in essence spiritual and Divine, though we
so often misdirect and degrade them.

^ The desire after God does not begin on our part. God has
not hidden Himself from man for the purpose that He might
allow His creature. His lost child, to cry after Him. We love
God because He first loved us. If we desire God, it is because
God hath first desired us. God asks for our heart as His taber-
nacle; He surrounds us night and day with tender, pathetic
appeals : He says, " If any man love me, I will come in, and make
my abode in his heart." He plies us, as mother never plied her
prodigal child, to come home again ; and there is not one word of
grace, or pathos, or tender entreaty, which He has withheld from
His argument, if haply He might find His way, with our glad
consent, into our heart of hearts. Do you desire God ? It is
because God first desired you. Do you feel kindlings of love
towards Him? Your love is of yesterday. His love comes up
from unbeginning time, and goes on to unending eternity ! ^

2. "Thou openest thine hand." — What does this bring home
to us ? Does it not in the first place set forth the marvellous
liberality of God ? This means that God's creatures do not wait
upon Him in vain. He does not disappoint their need and their
expectation. When the due season comes, His hand opens to fill
their hearts with food and gladness. He does not give grudgingly
or sparingly, but with full and open hand. Nor does He trim and
carve His gifts according to the measure of our merit. If He
were to do that we should fare badly, for we have all been un-
dutiful children. He even gives us freely when we deserve not
His goodness but His condemnation.
' Tauler's Life and Sermons (trans, by S. Winkworth), 294, - Joseph Parker.

i8o THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD

(1) "Thou openest thine hand." That is enough. But God
cannot satisfy our deepest desires by any such short and easy
method. There is a great deal more to be done by Him before
the aspirations of love and fear and longing for righteousness can
be fulfilled. He has to breathe Himself into us. Lower creatures
have enough when they have the meat that drops from His hand.
They know and care nothing for the hand that feeds. But God's
best gifts cannot be separated from Himself. They are Himself,
and in order to " satisfy the desire of every living thing " there is
no way possible, even to Him, but the impartation of Himself to
the waiting heart.

^ What means it to have a God, or what is God ? The answer
is : God is one from whom we expect all good, and in whom we
can take refuge in all our needs, so that to have God is nothing
else than to trust and believe in Him with all our hearts ; as I
have often said, that trust and faith of the heart alone make both
God and Idol. If the faith and trust are right, tHen thy God is
also the right God, and, again, if thy trust is false and wrong, then
thou hast not the right God. For the two, faith and God, hold
close together.^

(2) But we have to put our desires into words before God can
satisfy them. " Your Father knoweth what things ye have need
of, before ye ask him." What then ? Why should we ask Him ?
Because the asking will clear our thoughts about our desires. It
will be a very good test of them. There are many things that we
all wish, which we should not much like to put into our prayers,
not because of any foolish notion that they are too small to find
a place there, but because of an uncomfortable suspicion that
perhaps they are not the kind of things that we ought to wish.
And if we cannot make the desire into a cry, the sooner we make
it dead as well as dumb the better for ourselves. The cry will
serve, too, as a stimulus to the wishes which are put into words.
Silent prayer is well, but there is a wonderful power on ourselves
— it may be due to our weakness, but still it exists — in the
articulate and audible utterance of our petitions to God.

^ The sweetest and the best talent that God gives to any man or
woman in this world is the talent of prayer. And the best usury
that any man or woman brings back to God when He comes to
reckon with them at the end of this world is a life of prayer.

' Luther, The Oreaier Catechism.

PSALM cxLv. i6 i8i

And those servants best put their Lord's money to the exchangers
who rise early and sit late, as long as they are in this world, ever
finding out and ever following after better and better methods of
prayer, and ever forming more secret, more steadfast, and more
spiritually fruitful habits of prayer: till they literally pray
without ceasing, and till they continually strike out into new
enterprises in prayer, and new achievements, and new enrich-
ments. It was this that first drew me to Teresa. It was her
singular originality in prayer and her complete captivity to prayer.
It was the time she spent in prayer, and the refuge, and the peace,
and the sanctification and the power for carrying on hard and
unrequited work that she all her life found in prayer. It was her
fidelity and her utter surrender of herself to this first and last of
all her religious duties, till it became more a delight, and, indeed,
more an indulgence, than a duty. With Teresa it was prayer
first, and prayer last, and prayer always. With Teresa literally
all things were sanctified, and sweetened, and made fruitful by
prayer.^

(3) When we are ready, then, to receive God's satisfying
bounty we will bring all our desires before His throne, and their
fulfilment will surely come to pass. All that our heart has ever
craved of the beautiful and good, but which we have never had ;
all we have ever longed for and have never reached ; all that has
been taken from us that was dear and precious to our souls and to
the loss of which we have never become reconciled ; all we have
ever wanted without being able to win, though we have tried hard
and earnestly so to do ; all we have ever won and been unable to
keep, or have kept only to find that the joy we expected in it has
never been ours — in all these we have been seeking something
which is waiting for us in the hands of God, and He will not fail
to give it us when we are ready to receive it.

And the amazing thing is that God more than satisfies our
desires. His bounty is so great that many are unwilling to take
His greatest gifts. For He has given His only-begotten and well-
beloved Son, and how many refuse Him ! How foolish it is to
take God's lesser gifts and refuse the greatest of all ! The man in
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress gathering the straws with the muck-
rake and neglecting the crown above his head is a fit picture of
such un-wisdom. Let us not follow his miserable example, but
rather, while we receive with thankfulness all the good that God
' A. Whyte, Smta Teresa, 18.

i82 THE GOOD PROVIDENCE OF GOD

gives us for the body, accept with equal readiness the Gift He has
provided for the soul.

^ Work we may, seek and strive, and we are all bidden do
this; but in the end it is not our doing. It is not the need we
feel of Christ which saves us. It is Christ, and He is a gift. If
He did not place Himself before us, we could never see Him. He
puts Himself in our hands. Unless we can grasp Him there, we
shall never grasp Him anywhere. He lies, like treasure, at our
feet ; if we do not find Him there, we shall never find Him any-
where. He lies, like the pearl, under our eyes : if we do not see
Him there, we shall never see Him anywhere.^

' £. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 99.

Tenderness and Power.

«B3

Literature.

Ainsworth (P. C), The Pilgrim Church, 28.
Blackley (T.), Practical Sei-Tumis, ii. 82.
Fairbairn (A. M.), Christ in the Centuries, 205.
Ford (H.), Sermons with Analyses, 61.
Harper (F.), A Year with Christ, 47.
Holden (J. S.), Life's Flood-Tide, 106.
Matheson (G.), Times of Retirement, 206.
Parker (J.), Sttidies in Texts, vi. 79.

„ „ The City Temple, iii. 217.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 36.
Christian World Pulpit, xxvii. 338 (Canon Curteis).
Sunday Mayazine, 1895, p. 353 (\V. J. Foxell).

1S4

Tenderness and Power.

He healeth the broken in heart,

And bindeth up their wounds.

He telleth the number of the stars ;

He giveth them all their names.— Ps. cxivii. 3, 4.

The old Hebrew Psalmist, by placing in striking contrast the
infinitely great and the infinitely little, brings out, in the most
effective way possible, the providence of God as at once compre-
hensive enough to superintend the interests of the collective
universe, and kindly and careful enough not to neglect the
smallest individual. While His omniscient eye numbers the
innumerable stars, His gentle touch heals the broken heart.
While His spoken word holds the glistening planets to their
spheres, His tender hand binds up our bleeding wounds. These
are old, very old thoughts, the imaginings of ancient Hebrew men,
who little dreamed of the strange secrets hidden in the earth
beneath their feet, or in the heaven above their heads ; but, though
between their day and ours lie centuries crowded with the most
splendid discoveries man has made, yet neither science nor
philosophy has ever proclaimed a truth that can match in sub-
limity, equal in beauty, or rival in its wealth of eternal human
interest, this old Hebrew faith — " He healeth the broken in heart,
and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the
stars ; he giveth them all their names."

I.

Broken Hearts and Countless Stars. ^

1. The Psalmist brings together here countless stars and
broken hearts. It is not easy for us to get these two thoughts
into our minds at the same time. Still harder is it for us to
think them as one thought. It seems such a far cry from all the jj

i86 TENDERNESS AND POWER

stars of heaven to one poor bleeding heart, from those myriad
points of fire to a few human tears. We see the sweep of the
stars, and we walk in the shadow of pain ; but in the bitter things
we suffer, how little use we make of the great things we see ! One
idea excludes another that really belongs to it. We have not a
large enough mental grasp. We look up at the stars and we
forget our little world ; we look out upon our little world and we
forget the stars. We lose the years in the thought of the hour,
and the hour in the thought of the ages. We seem unable to
hold on to a great thought when we are in one of life's narrow
places ; yet it is just in that narrow place that the great thought
can do most for us. We live by hours, and so we count by hours.
We are pilgrims, so our standard of measurement is a step. In
our fragmentary thinking we draw dividing lines across the un-
divided, and fail to see that the limited and the illimitable are
not two things but one. But the Psalmist brought stars and
broken hearts together.

^ I think I am not far wrong in saying that, whatever science
or revelation may have to tell us about God's relation to the sun
and to the stars, there are many points in men's and women's
lives when such things lose all their interest in the presence of
personal anxieties that will take no denial. There are moments
— we all, or most of us, know them too well — when even one
slight physical pain obtrudes itself upon our attention and suc-
ceeds in spoiling our work, ap a grain of sand might stop some
delicate machine, or a little nft spoil the music of a lute. How
much more, then, when the frame of a strong man is bowed down
with utter and uncontrollable grief, or the woman's heart stands
still at news of loss that so long as sun shall roll or stars give
forth their shining shall never, never be forgotten ! The heart
does not measure things by algebra, or weigh such things in the
balance of a cool and reasonable computation. The affections live,
as it were, outside of time, and dwell in eternity alone with God.
You may tell me, therefore, the number of the stars ; but under
bereavement I am not comforted. You may catalogue them all
by their names ; but my bitter pain refuses to be assuaged thereby,
my broken heart refuses to be interested.^

2. But the Psalmist brings stars and broken hearts together,
because to him heart-break is not to be regarded as a rare and

* Canon Curteis.

PSALM cxLvii. 3, 4 187

tragic episode in the human story. This world knows sorrow
only as an incident. It is, for it, a cloud upon the sun, sometimes
darkening all the after day. It is a voice of weeping or a choked
silence in the shadow dusk of the river's edge. But, the last true
sorrow of life is not on this wise. It is not dealt out to one here
and another there as a bitter judgment or a wholesome discipline.
It is inwoven into life. To miss it is to miss life. It is the price
of the best. It is the law of the highest. When, after what we
sometimes call the long farewell, you have seen a sorrow -stricken
man bearing a bleeding heart out to the verge of the world, beyond
the last outpost of earthly sympathy and beyond the kindly king-
dom of human help, you have seen something for which earth has
no healing, but you have not learned anything approaching the
whole truth concerning heart-break. There is the broken and the
contrite heart, the heart that is seeking sainthood, and fainting
and falling and aching in the quest. There is the broken and the
yearning heart, that strains and throbs with lofty longings and
the burden of the valley of vision. And to find healing for such
sorrow a man must find God. And He must be the God who
counts the stars.

^ Perhaps no man ever stood in the presence of a great trouble
without being driven by his own deepest instincts to seek strength
and comfort from a Being mightier than himself. Many a hitherto
godless mariner, battling with the wild waves, has called with
simple and fervid faith on the God whose name the child had
loved to reverence before the man had learned to profane. Many
a poor burdened woman, whose heart was well-nigh breaking in
the presence of a sorrow she could not bear alone, has grown
calm and strong as her agony rose into a great cry after God.
Instincts like these, characteristic of man the wide world over,
tell that the Creator has planted within the human spirit the
faculty to which, when danger from within or without threatens,
the faith is native that He who healeth the broken in heart, and
bindeth up their wounds, also delighteth to hear and answer the
prayer of His afflicted creatures.^

^ An astronomer, known to me, divides his heart between the
stars and his home — in the latter a dying boy ; both know that
the God of the stars has knit their hearts together and binds
them up. The spiritual man is apt to come among scientists as
into an ice-house, the scientist into church as into a tropical

* A. M. Fairbairn, Christ in the Centuries, 209.

i88 TENDERNESS AND POWER

house. The recognition of God's presence and work in both is
necessary to worthy thought of Him.^

3. Broken hearts appeal to God in a way that the most
brilliant stars cannot do. The planets whirl through space, but
do not know it. They are safe but blind, deaf, inert masses.
They respond to the will of their Creator, but they are not con-
scious of a Father's love. Amid those vast glories our Father can
find no room for His pity, no response to His love, nothing that
He can bend over to heal and to bless. The stars are not the
true sphere of God, but the heart. The heart is the sphere of
His love, the realm of His pity. What God does is seen among
the stars, but what God is, that only the broken heart can know.

^ From a purely speculative and intellectual point of view, I
defy any man to preach a gospel of comfort from the text, " He
telleth the number of the stars." Many a man has felt his help-
lessness and his loneliness beneath the stars. He has said, God is
immeasurably remote from my little life down here among the
shadows. Is it likely that amid the vast and intricate calcula-
tions of the universe He will take account of an insignificant
fraction like my life ? How should He think upon me when He
has all the stars to count ? How should He miss me from the
fold when He is shepherding all the heavenly hosts ? Thus for
some the greatness of God has been made to spell the loneliness
of man. That is the shivering logic of an intellectual conception
of the Deity. The Psalmist who spoke of star-counting and
heart-healing in the same breath had got beyond that. The deep,
persistent needs of his life had brought him there. It was not by
a mere chance that he chose to speak of heart-break when he
sought to link earth with heaven and to lift the fretful mind of
man up to the thought of God's eternal presence and power.
Heart-break is not an idea ; it is an experience. Yes, and it is an
experience that only the stars can explain and only Divinity can
account for.*

^ In Luke Fildes' well-known picture of " The Doctor," we
see the physician in the cottage seated by the bedside of a sick
child, watching with a tender and painful solicitude. All his ex-
perience, all his skill, and all his patience are concentrated upon
that little child. His whole heart, mind, and soul are drawn out to
it. God is more at home with the broken heart than with the stars.*

* Morlais Jones. ^ P. 0. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, 30.

* H. Ford, Sermons with Analyses, 63.

PSALM cxLvii. 3, 4 189

II.

Heart-healing and Star-counting.

The singer of this song linked together the healing of man's
broken heart with a profound and transcendent conception of
God. There was a time when the preacher used to give out for
his text, " Behold, the nations are counted as the small dust of
the balance : behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing."
He preached the glory and the wisdom and the power of God
until men saw the universe as but one ray of all that glory, one
word of all that wisdom, one deed of all that power. And with
that tremendous background he preached the effectual comfort of
the everlasting Father. Some are getting afraid of that back-
ground. And we require to remind ourselves that the human heart
needs it and demands it, and will never be truly satisfied with
anything else. There is nothing else large enough for us to
write upon it the meanings and the sanctions and the purposes of
God's healing mercy. But to look at it from man's side, the
gospel that is to bring availing and abiding comfort to a world
like ours needs a tremendous background : it needs a transcendent
sweep. If we have a doctrine of the Divine immanence that
veils the stars, that seems to make the truth of God a more
familiar and compassable thing, that silences the challenge of
God's lonely sovereignty and His transcendent and mysterious
glory, we have not the doctrine that will meet your deepest
needs or win a response from the depths of other hearts. This
shame-stricken, yearning world needs the glory of God as much
as it needs His mercy.

^ You know quite well that the greater the power, the more
arresting does gentleness become. As might advances and energy
increases, so always the more notable is gentleness. It is far
more striking in a mailed warrior than in a mother with her
woman's heart ; far more impressive in the lord of armies than in
some retired and ineffectual dreamer. The mightier the power a
man commands, the more compelling is his trait of gentleness.
If he be tyrant of a million subjects, a touch of tenderness is
thrilling. And it is when we think of the infinite might of God,
who is King of kings and Lord of lords, that we realize the

I90 TENDERNESS AND POWER

wonder of our text. It is He who calleth out the stars hy
number, and maketh the pillars of the heaven to shake. And
when He worketh, no man can stay His hand or say to Him,
What doest Thou ? And it is this Kuler, infinite in power, before
whom the princes of the earth are vanity, who is exquisitely and
for ever gentle.^

1. "He telleth the number of the stars, he giveth them all
their names." One would think that if He were busy building,
and gathering together, and healing the broken in heart, and
binding up their wounds, He would have no time to attend to the
framework of the universe. Yet here is the distinct declaration
that the universe is taken care of at every point. There is not
one little wicket-gate that opens into the meadow of the stars
that is not angel-guarded. God has no postern gates by which
the thief can enter undiscovered. The word " telleth " is a singular
word ; what is it when reduced to the level of our mother tongue ?
" He telleth " is equal to " He numbereth " ; He looketh night
after night to see that every one is there.

^ We have sometimes heard the shepherd muttering to him-
self as the sheep came home in the gloaming — one, two, three,
four. Why this enumeration ? Because he has so many, and he
must know whether every one is at home or not. What does one
matter in fifty ? Everything. It is the missing one that makes
the heart ache ; it is the one thing wanting that reduces wealth
to poverty ; it is the one anxiety that drives our sleep away. I
have a thousand blessings ; on that recollection I will fall to
slumber. Yet I cannot. Why not ? Because of the one anxiety,
the one pain, the one trouble, the one child lacking, the one friend
grieved, the one life in danger, the one legitimate aspiration
imperilled and threatened with disappointment. But I have a
thousand blessings ; why not pillow my head upon these and rest ?
I cannot : nature is against me ; reason may have a long argument,
but the one anxiety arises and sneers it down. So the Lord
telleth, counteth, goeth over the number, as it were one by one,
to see that every little light is kindled, every asteroid at home.
The very hairs of your head are all numbered. He makes pets of
the stars — He calls them by their names. He treats them as if
they were intelligent ; He speaks to them as if they could answer
Him.*

' G. H. Morrison, The Weaving of Glory, 181.
' J. Parker, Studies in Texts, vi. 84.

PSALM cxLvii. 3, 4 191

2. The God of the multitude is also the God of the individual
soul. He attends to the innumerable host and to the single unit.
Where we hear but a distant murmuring He hears the separate
beating of every heart. This is one great distinction between
natural and revealed religion, for the one thing that natural
religion cannot do is to assure us of the individual care of God.
The god of natural religion is like the driver of some eastern
caravan ; and he drives his caravan with skill unerring over the
desert to the gleaming city. But he never halts for any bruised
mortal, or waits to minister to any dying woman, or even for a
moment checks his team to ease the agonies of any child. That ;
is the god of natural religion — the mighty tendency that makes ,
for righteousness. Imperially careful of the whole, he is |
sovereignly careless of the one. And over against that god, so/
dark and terrible, there stands for ever the God of revelation;
saying in infinite and individual mercy, " I am the God op
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." He, too, is making for a city
which hath foundations, and whose streets are golden. But He
has an ear for every feeble cry, a great compassion for every
bruised heart, and a watchful pity, like a mother's pity, for lips
that are craving for a little water. It was a great thought which
St. Peter uttered when he said to all who read, " He careth for
you." But St. Paul was nearer the heart of the Eternal when he
said, " He loved me, and gave himself for me."

This thought of God is countersigned in the clearest way by
Christ. The God of Christ, in communistic ages, is the asylum
of individuality. It is true that there was something in a crowd
that stirred our Saviour to His depths. He was moved with com-
passion when He saw the multitude, as a flock of sheep without
a shepherd. And when He came over against the city of Jeru-
salem, where the murmur of life was, and where the streets were
thronged, looking, He was intensely moved, and wept. There
was a place for the all within that heart of His. He " saw life
steadily, and saw it whole." There was not a problem of these
teeming multitudes but had its last solution in His blood. Yet
He who thus encompassed the totality in a love that was majestic
to redeem, had a heart that never for an instant faltered in its
passionate devotion to the one. Living for mankind, He spoke
His deepest when His whole audience was one listener. Dying

192 TENDERNESS AND POWER

for mankind, His heart was thrilled with the agonized entreaty
of one thief. For one coin the woman swept the house ; for one
sheep the shepherd faced the midnight ; for one son, and him a
sorry prodigal, the father in the home was broken-hearted. That
is complete assurance that our God is the God of individuals.
"Thou art as much His care, as if beside, nor man nor angel
moved in heaven or earth." He is Almighty, and takes the
whole wide universe into the covering hollow of His hand,
yet He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.

3. The God who counts the stars is the only sufficient healer
of broken hearts. Only He, in virtue of His Deity, can read the
secret sorrows of the heart, to whom " all hearts are open, all
desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." This is the
prerogative of God, and of God alone. And none but He, in virtue
of His Humanity, can lay His hand upon the broken heart to
mollify and heal its wounds. How often there are deep down in
the heart feelings too sad and too sacred for utterance to mortal
ears, when we crave for a higher sympathy than that which man
can give, and the soul finds relief only in reaching out in prayer
to God. And there is no limit to God's sympathy. It is bound
only by the horizon of human need and human suffering. The
heart broken with contrition for sin, the heart bruised with the
sorrows of life, the heart bleeding with the anguish of bereave-
ment— these all find a response in the heart of God, for this is
the sphere of His pity, of His compassion, and of His love.
There is no human sorrow but appeals to Him.

^ Think you He cannot sympathize with our worst sorrows,
who shielded from scorn the broken-hearted who could only
smite upon his breast; who stood like a God between their
victim and the hell-hounds who were baying for their prey, till
they cowered at His feet and slunk away ; who could forgive a
coward, and select the alien and heretic as a type of the neighbour
who is to be loved; who was peculiarly sensitive to the charm
of woman's society and its soothing gentleness; who wept for
temporary grief ; who was considerate for the tired disciples and
the hungry multitude ; whose chosen home was the house of the
publican and sinner ; who bore contempt with majestic dignity —
is that a trifle ? — who felt keenly, as His own touching words
witness, the pain of homelessnese ? Oh, can you say that He

PSALM cxLvii. 3, 4 193

could not enter into our worst sorrows, or that His trials were
in " show " ? Comprehend that heart, containing all that was
manliest and all that was most womanly. Think what you will,
but do not mistake Hira, or else you will lose the one great
certainty to which, in the midst of the darkest doubt, I never
ceased to cling — the entire symmetry and loveliness, and the
unequalled nobleness of the humanity of the Son of Man.^

4. What is this wonderful ligament with which Christ binds
the wounds of the once broken heart ? It is the sympathy with
another's pain; it is the remembrance that I suffer not alone.
The sympathy with my brother restrains my personal outflow.
It takes away the egotism of my grief. I no longer feel that a
strange thing has befallen me. I no longer resent the raincloud
as a special wrong. I feel that it is not special — that it is
universal It is the thought of this that stops the outward
bleeding of my heart. It makes me refuse to show my wound.
It forbids me to cry out in the streets as if I were a solitary
sufferer. It says, " Think what your brother must feel ; he has
the same pains as you ! " It bids me count the burdens of the
passers-by ; and, as I count, I forget to remember my own.

^ The actual conditions of our life being as they are, and the
capacity for suffering so large a principle in things, and the only
principle always safe, a sympathy with the pain one actually
sees, it follows that the constituent practical difference between
men will be their capacity for a trained insight into those
conditions, their capacity for sympathy; and the future with
those who have most of it. And for the present, those who have
much of it have (I tell myself) something to hold by, even in the
dissolution of a world, or in that dissolution of self, which is for
everyone no less than the dissolution of the world it represents
for him. Nearly all of us, I suppose, have had our moments in
which any effective sympathy for us has seemed impossible, and
our pain in life a mere stupid outrage upon us, like some over-
whelming physical violence; and we could seek refuge from it
at best, only in a mere general sense of goodwill, somewhere
perhaps. And then, to one's surprise, the discovery of that
goodwill, if it were only in a not unfriendly animal, may seem to
have explained, and actually justified, the existence of our pain
at all.

There have been occasions when I have felt that if others

^ Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 233.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 13

194 TENDERNESS AND POWER

cared for me as I did for them, it would be not so much a solace
of loss as an equivalent for it — a certain real thing in itself — a
touching of that absolute ground among all the changes of
phenomena, such as our philosophers of late have professed
themselves quite unable to find. In the mere clinging of
human creatures to each other, nay ! in one's own solitary self-
pity, even amidst what might seem absolute loss, I seem to touch
the eternal.^

» Walter Pater,

The Beginning of Wisdom.

>9S

Literature.

Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, vii. 1.
Banks (L. A.), The Problems of Youth, 1.
Benson (R. M.), The Wisdom of the So7i of David, 1.
Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, ii. 258.
Hart (H, M.), A Preacher's Legacy, 221.
Horton (R. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositor's Bible), 9.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 71.
Thomas (J.), Sermons (Myrtle Street Pulpit), ii. 177.
Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 11.

Chv/rchmian's Pulpit: Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, iv. 150 (H
Goodwin).

19«

The Beginning of Wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.— Prov. i. 7.

This proposition is by some commentators regarded as the
motto, symbol, or device of the Book of Proverbs. Others
regard it as forming part of the superscription. As a general
proposition expressing the essence of the philosophy of the
Israelites, and from its relation to the rest of the contents of this
book, it rightly occupies a special and individual position. The
proposition occurs again in Prov. ix. 10, and it is met with in
similar or slightly modified forms in other books of the Wisdom
literature. The Arabs have adopted it at the head of their
proverbial collections.

I.

The Importance of Wisdom.

1. Knowledge, that is, true knowledge or wisdom, is the
supremely important thing. " Wisdom " was the key- word of the
East in general, as well as of the Greek philosophic systems of
thought. In the different cases the force of the term and the
content assigned to it were different, yet, in spite of the differences,
the term marks a common ground on which all meet, and reveals
the essential unity of human thought and aspiration. " Wisdom "
may be differently conceived, but there is agreement on this, that
there is a great world-secret which to know is to find life, that
there is a sphinx riddle, which we must answer or die. In the
general Oriental idea of " Wisdom " there was much superstition.
The wise man was he who could read the secret of the world, and
unfold for men's guidance the roll of destiny. This sometimes
took the form of such superstitions as that of astrology ; yet there
was a manifest effort to propound the right questions concerning
human life, aiid to find the right answer. The result seems, from

'?7

198 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

our point of view, to be meagre and inadequate enough, but there
must have been a truth for them at the heart of it.

^ Prior to its contact with Hellenism, the Semitic mind had
proceeded no farther in the path of Philosophy than the pro-
pounding of enigmas, and the utterance of aphoristic wisdom.
Detached observations of Nature, but especially of the life and
fate of Man, form the basis of such thinking ; and where com-
prehension ceases, resignation to the almighty and inscrutable
will of God comes in without difficulty. By the side of this
wisdom there was found everywhere the Magic of the sorcerer, —
a knowledge which was authenticated by command over outward
things. But it was only in the priestly circles of ancient
Babylonia that men rose to a more scientific consideration of the
world. Their eyes were turned from the confusion of earthly
existence to the order of the heavens. They resembled rather
the Greeks who came to understand the Many and Manifold in
their sublunary forms only after they had discovered the harmony
of the All in the unity and steadiness of the movement of the
heavens. This Chaldaean wisdom, from the time of Alexander
the Great, became pervaded, in Babylonia and Syria, with
Hellenistic and later with Hellenistic-Christian ideas, or else was
supplanted by them. Of more importance than any Semitic
tradition was the contribution made by Persian and Indian
wisdom. India was regarded as the true land of wisdom. In
Arab writers we often come upon the view that there the birth-
place of philosophy is to be found. By peaceful trading, in which
the agents between India and the West were principally Persians,
and next as a result of the Muslim conquest, acquaintance with
Indian wisdom spread far and wide. Many a deliverance of
ethical and political wisdom, in the dress of proverbs, was taken
over from the fables and tales of India. The investigations of the
Indians, associated with their sacred books and wholly determined
by a religious purpose, have certainly had a lasting influence upon
Persian Sufism and Islamic Mysticism. But the Greek mind was
needed to direct the reflective process to the knowledge of the
Keal. In Indian philosophy knowledge in the main continued
to be only a means. Deliverance from the evil of existence
was the aim, and philosophy a pathway to the life of blessed-
ness. Hence the monotony of this wisdom, — concentrated, as
it was, upon the essence of all things in its Oneness, — as con-
trasted with the many-branched science of the Hellenes, which
strove to comprehend the operations of Nature and Mind on all
sides.*

* T. J. De Boer, The History of Philosophy in Islam, 6.

PROVERBS I. 7 199

2. The Greek idea of " Wisdom " was a grander thing ; it
meant a clear insight into the eternal order of the world. In
more modern terms, it meant the knowledge of God. But it had
its defects. The God that was sought after was too much of an
intellectual Infinite, and too exclusively apprehended by the
intellect. Hence the dictum that the highest wisdom was a kind
of intellectual contemplation in which the mind transcended
appearances and looked right into the heart and the reality of
things. Even by the Greek this wisdom was held with a strong
element of ethical apprehension and feeling. The ethical factors
were presupposed even when not expressly stated, for the Greeks
declared that knowledge was virtue, and it is clear that the
knowledge which is virtue is ethical at the heart of it. But the
intellectual and metaphysical predominated too much in the
Greek system ; the transcendence and sovereignty of the ethical
element was not made clear and emphatic, and Greek wisdom at
last degenerated into a jingle of syllogisms. Yet the Greek had
seen much of the truth of the world, and many of the sons of
Greece lived strong and heroic lives through the wisdom that God
had revealed to them. When their old truths were ready to
vanish away, God was already preparing to send them the higher
wisdom, the wisdom revealed in Christ.

^ Wisdom, the third of Plato's cardinal virtues, consists in the
supremacy of reason over spirit and appetite ; just as temperance
and courage consisted in the subordination of appetite and spirit
to reason. Wisdom, then, is much the same thing as temperance
and courage, only in more positive and comprehensive form.
Wisdom is the vision of the good, the true end of man, for the
sake of which the lower elements must be subordinated.^

% On the broad distinction between the morally good life,
manifesting itself in such " virtues " as self-mastery and liberality,
and the life of intellectual insight as typified in the wise adminis-
tration of one's own and other people's affairs, Aristotle shows no
tendency to suppose that a man can be good in the full sense
without being intelligent and thoughtful. The life of prudence
he consistently conceives of (as we should expect from his general
view of the relation of higher forms of reality to lower) as the
end to which the life of conformity to moral and social traditions
points, and in which it finds its reality. According to this view,
* W, D. Hyde, The Five Great Philosophies of Life, 129.

200 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

to be good is to be on the road to wisdom ; to be wise is to know
where goodness points and what it means. Aristotle endeavoured
to hold the balance between the citizen and the philosopher, first,
by representing the life of good citizenship as a means to the life
of leisure or philosophy, and, second, by identifying the latter
with that highest form of intellectual activity which is the end
and the soul of civilization. Wisdom, as conceived by Aristotle,
presents two features which are the marks of truth. In the first
place, it is activity, and activity of the highest element in man.
To possess this wisdom is thus to heighten, instead of to depress,
the sense of living. Secondly, it is a deepening of the present,
and not merely the preparation for a future life. It is true that
Aristotle speaks of it as a putting off of our mortality, but the
immortality which he has in view consists not in an other-world
life foreign to the present, but in the power of seeing the eternal
principles or laws of which our own world is the expression.^

3. The Hebrew, though we cannot compare him in intellectual
might with the great Greek athletes, found a nobler and truer
and more abiding conception of "Wisdom." While the Greek
conception contained much that was noble and true, and was to
that extent a preparation for the coming of Christ, especially pre-
paring the intellectual elements and methods for the apprehen-
sion of the teaching of the Son, yet it was of the Hebrew concep-
tion that the Wisdom revealed in Christ was a direct develop-
ment. The standpoint is the same in the Old and in the New
Testament, and the Hebrew presentation of the relation of
" Wisdom " both to God and to man contains some striking sug-
gestions which become almost startling in the light of the New
Testament revelation of Jesus Christ. The primary and funda-
mental idea in Hebrew " Wisdom " is ethical. The fear of the
Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The Hebrew does not argue
the matter ; he does not prove it by a series of syllogisms. He
knows it to be so. He is self-consciously ethical. God's voice
within him speaks to his spirit, his God-filled life presents
him with a clear message, and that message he proclaims to the
world. The question he propounds to himself is not, Whence
came the world ? but, What is the true path for me to pursue ?
What is the utterance within me which I recognize to be noblest
and divinest ? What is the course of life, the manner of exist-
* J. H. Muirhead, Chapters from Aristotle's Ethics, 162.

PROVERBS I. 7 20I

ence, in which I shall be true to the best within me, and find
peace and satisfaction for my life ? The great merit of the
Hebrew lies in this, that he, of all the old nations of the world,
gave the truest answer to these questions, that he became the
oracle of God in the shrine of human life, and that, while systems
of thought have changed and been superseded, the message he
gave the world of the will of God as the ethical Sovereign of the
world remains in its integrity, his ethical standpoint has been
confirmed by the development of the world, and the " Wisdom "
he proclaimed stands for ever as the highest wisdom, the true
guide of human life, and the true explanation of God's world.

^ When we speak of Hebrew wisdom we must not think of
it as concerned with the problems of metaphysics which absorb
the attention of Western philosophers. It was concrete not
abstract, practical not speculative. Its task was not to win an
ordered and harmonious conception of the universe, but to teach
men how they might direct their way aright. Even where it
busied itself with problems, it was a practical interest which
supplied the impulse. We have no reason to doubt that from the
earliest times there were those who reflected on life and conduct,
and embodied their observations in picturesque parable or terse
aphorism. Many of the maxims in the Book of Proverbs may
well be quite ancient, and not a few may have come from Solomon
himself. The main body of the book consists of maxims for the
right conduct of life, written from the standpoint of the virtuous
middle classes, and with a firm belief that morality and prosperity
went hand in hand. The shrewd worldly wisdom, the prudential
note, the value placed on success, perhaps bulk too largely in the
common estimate of the book, and do injustice to its finer, nobler,
and more generous qualities. And even the lower element has its
place in any sober judgment of life. Society needs it for a stable
basis, the commercial world has much to learn from the insistence
on integrity, while many of the children of light would be all the
better for some of that wisdom in which they are notoriously
deficient.^

II.

The Beginning of Wisdom.

1. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God. That is to
say, the gates of Knowledge and Wisdom are opened only to the

^ A. S, Peake, The Heligion of Isrciel, 145,

202 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

knock of Reverence. Without reverence, it is true, men may
gain what is called worldly knowledge and worldly wisdom ; but
these are far removed from truth, and experience often shows us
how profoundly ignorant and how incurably blind pushing and
successful people are, whose knowledge is all turned to delusion,
and whose wisdom shifts round into folly. The seeker after real
knowledge will have little about him which suggests worldly
success. He is modest, self -forgetful, possibly shy ; he is absorbed
in a disinterested pursuit, for he has seen afar the high, white star of
truth ; at it he gazes, to it he aspires. Things which only affect
him personally make but little impression on him ; things which
affect the truth move, agitate, excite him. A bright spot is on
ahead, beckoning to him. The colour mounts to his cheek, the
nerves thrill, and his soul is filled with rapture, when the form
seems to grow clearer and a step is gained in the pursuit. When
a discovery is made he almost forgets that he is the discoverer ;
he will even allow the credit of it to pass to another, for he
would rather rejoice in the truth itself than allow his joy to be
tinged with a personal consideration. Yes, this modest, self-
forgetful, reverent mien is the first condition of winning Truth,
which must be approached on bended knee, and recognized with a
humble and a prostrate heart. There is no gainsaying the fact
that this fear, this reverence, is the beginning of wisdom.

^ The greatest men of science in our own as in all other ages
are distinguished by a singular simplicity, and by a reverence
which communicates itself to their readers. What could be more
reverent than Darwin's way of studying the coral-insect or the
earth-worm ? He bestowed on these humble creatures of the
ocean and of the earth the most patient and loving observation.
And his success in understanding and explaining them was in
proportion to the respect which he showed to them. The coral-
diver has no reverence for the insect ; he is bent only on gain, and
he consequently can tell us nothing of the coral reef and its
growth. The gardener has no reverence for the worm ; he cuts it
ruthlessly with his spade, and flings it carelessly aside ; accord-
ingly he is not able to tell us of its lowly ministries and of the
part it plays in the fertilization of the soil. It was Darwin's
reverence which proved to be the beginning of knowledge in
these departments of investigation ; and if it was only the
reverence of the naturalist, the truth is illustrated all the better,
for his knowledge of the unseen and the eternal dwindled away,

PROVERBS I. 7 203

just as his perception of beauty in literature and art declined, in
proportion as he suffered his spirit of reverence towards these
things to die.i

2. The deepest reverence arises from the recognition of God.
If this universe of which we form a part is a thought of the
Divine mind, a work of the Divine hand, a scene of Divine opera-
tions, in which God is realizing, by slow degrees, a vast spiritual
purpose, it is evident that no attempt to understand it can be
successful which leaves this, its fundamental idea, out of account ;
as well might one attempt to understand a picture while refusing
to recognize that the artist had any purpose to express in painting
it, or indeed that there was any artist at all. So much every one
will admit. But if the universe is not the work of a Divine mind,
or the effect of a Divine will ; if it is merely the working of a
blind, irrational force, which realizes no end, because it has no
end to realize; if we, the feeble outcome of a long, unthinking
evolution, are the first creatures that ever thought, and the only
creatures who now thinTc, in all the universe of Being ; it follows
that of a universe so irrational there can be no true knowledge for
rational beings, and of a scheme of things so unwise there can be
no philosophy or wisdom. No person who reflects can fail to
recognize this, and this is the truth which is asserted in the text.
It is not necessary to maintain that without admitting God we
cannot have knowledge of a certain number of empirical facts ;
but that does not constitute a philosophy or a wisdom. It is
necessary to maintain that without admitting God we cannot
have any explanation of our knowledge, or any verification of it ;
without admitting God our knowledge can never come to any
roundness or completeness such as might justify us in calling it
by the name of Wisdom.

^ True Wisdom must account for the worlds that sweep in'i
space, and even for the lily of the field and the sparrow on thet
housetop. True Wisdom is ultimately a philosophy of thingsA
though it may be much more than this. We know that the New
Testament makes Jesus Christ, as rightly apprehended, the
explanation of the creation of the world, and of all the eternal
activities of God, though the starting-point of this position is an
ethical relation, and not a system of thought. This position is
* E. F. Horton, The Book 0/ Proverbs^ 16,

204 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

already obscurely anticipated in the Hebrew idea of Wisdom, on
which is made to rest the whole superstructure of the universe.^

3. If true wisdom is to be ours, the God that we acknowledge
must be no mere idea or abstraction, but Jehovah, the God of
revelation. It may be taken for granted that, so far as the
intellect alone claims satisfaction, it is enough to posit the bare
idea of God as the condition of all rational existence. But when
men come to recognize themselves as spiritual beings, with concep-
tions of right and wrong, with strong affections, with soaring
aspirations, with ideas which lay hold of Eternity, they find them-
selves quite incapable of being satisfied with the bare idea of
God; the* soul within them pants and thirsts for a living God.
An intellectual love of God might satisfy purely intellectual
creatures ; but to meet the needs of man as he is, God must be a
God that manifests His own personality, and does not leave
Himself without a witness to His rational creatures. A wisdom,
then, that is truly to appraise and rightly to guide the life of man,
must start with the recognition of a God whose peculiar designa-
tion is the Self-existent One, and who makes Himself known to
man by that name ; that is, it must start with the " fear of the
Lord."

(1) In building the temple of knowledge, this fear of the Lord
must be the foundation-stone. Knowledge being the appre-
hension of facts, and the application of them to life, cannot
properly begin, or be based on a right foundation, without first
apprehending and applying a fact which includes and which
modifies all other facts whatever. The world has lived long
enough to know that there is no such thing practically as getting
at the knowledge of God through His works and ways — through
the phenomena of nature, or the unfoldings of providence, or the
operations of the human intellect. God is that which He has
declared Himself to be; that which His Spirit has in and by
man's spirit testified that He is. And this revelation of Himself
standing recorded for all the world, it is mere idleness to suppose
that we can by searching find Him out, or can place that great
fact last, as an object of research and conclusion, which He has
blazoned forth for us on the face of His written word. This then

1 J, Thorny

PROVERBS I. 7 205

must come first, unless we should have all our knowledge crippled
and distorted.

^ A very clever man, a Bampton Lecturer, evidently writing
with good and upright intention, sends me a Lecture in which he
lays down the qualities he thinks necessary to make theological
study fruitful. They are courage, patience, and sympathy. He
omits one quality, in my opinion even more important than any
of these, and that is reverence : without a great stock of reverence,
mankind, as I believe, will go to the bad. I might add another
omission : it is caution — a thing different from reverence, but an
apt handmaid to it, and the proper counterpoise to the courage of
which certainly there seems to be no lack.^

(2) The fear of the Lord lies at the foundation of knowledge
because knowledge, understood as the mere accumulation of facts,
is inoperative upon life. The way from the head to the heart is
stopped by a hard rock, which must be softened and cut through
before a constant and reliable communication can be established.
And in order to this, which is of first and paramount importance,
if knowledge is to be of any real use to help and renovate man,
the affections must be wrought upon at the very outset of
teaching ; the information imparted must stir fear and hope and
love in the breast ; and these must break up the stony way, and
get diffused over the torpid heart, and stir it into action for good.
But what fact will you disclose, what knowledge impart, which
shall stir these affections ? Fear and hope and love are insepar-
ably connected in man with personal agency. Unless such agency
intervene, i.e., if the object of these feelings be only a material
one, fear becomes mere terror, hope mere expectation, love mere
profession. And what personal agency will you bring in at the
beginning of knowledge, which shall supply, and continue to
supply, the exercise of these affections, so as to guarantee through
life that knowledge shall not be barren or unprofitable ? God has
wisely placed about our infancy personal agencies exciting all
these affections. He has continued around us through the
greater part of life personal agencies on which fear and love and
hope more or less depend. But all these pass away from us, and
we from them. There is but one personal agent, whose influence
and presence can abide through life, can alike excite fear and
^ Letters on Church and Religion of W. E. GladsUme, ii. 327.

2o6 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

hope and love in the infant, in the child, in the youth, in the man,
in the aged, and on the bed of death ; and that one is God
Himself. And unless He be known first, and known throughout,
knowledge will abide alone in the head, and will not find a way to
the heart ; man will know, but will not grow by it ; will know,
but will not act upon it; will know for narrow, low, selfish
purposes, but never for blessing to himself or to others; never
for the great ends of his being — never for glory to his God.
The fear of the Lord is not a barren fact, like the shape of the
earth or the course of the seasons ; it is a living, springing, trans-
muting affection, capable of enduing even ordinary facts with power
to cheer and bless, and to bear fruit in men's hearts and lives.

^ Exactly in the degree in which you can find creatures
greater than yourself, to look up to, in that degree you are
ennobled yourself, and, in that degree, happy. If you could live
always in the presence of archangels, you would be happier than
in that of men ; but even if only in the company of admirable
knights and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright they were,
and the more you could reverence their virtue, the happier you
would be. On the contrary, if you were condemned to live among
a multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted, and malicious, you would
not be happy in the constant sense of your own superiority.
Thus all real joy and power of progress in humanity depend on
finding something to reverence, and all the baseness and misery
of humanity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by general
misgovernment, I repeat, we have created in Europe a vast
populace, and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost even
the power and conception of reverence ; — which exists only in the
worship of itself — which can neither see anything beautiful
around it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it; which has,
towards all goodness and greatness, no other feelings than those
of the lowest creatures — fear, hatred, or hunger ; a populace which
has sunk below your appeal in their nature, as it has risen beyond
your power in their multitude; — whom you can now no more
charm than you can the adder, nor discipline, than you can the
summer fly.^

(3) In New Testament times " the fear of God " has blossomed
into "the love of God." The characteristic Old Testament
designation of religion as " the fear of Jehovah " corresponds to
the Old Testament revelation of Him as the Holy One — that is,

1 Ruskin, Crovm of Wild Olive, § 137.

PROVERBS I. 7 207

as Him who is infinitely separated from human existence and
hmitations. Therefore is He " to be had in reverence of all " who
would be about Him — that fear or reverential awe in which no
slavish dread mingles, and which is perfectly consistent with
aspiration, trust, and love. The Old Testament reveals Him as
separate from men ; the New Testament reveals Him as united to
men in the Divine Man, Christ Jesus, Therefore its keynote is
the designation of religion as " the love of God " ; but that name
is no contradiction of the earlier, but the completion of it.

Tl It hardly entered into the mind of a Hebrew thinker to
conceive that "fear of the Lord" might pass into full, whole-
hearted, and perfect love. And yet it may be shown that this was
the change effected when Christ was of God "made unto us
Wisdom " ; it is not that the " fear," or reverence, become less ; it
is that the fear is swallowed up in the larger and more gracious
sentiment. For us who have received Christ as our Wisdom, it
has become almost a truism that we must love in order to know.
We recognize that the causes of things remain hidden from us
until our hearts have been kindled into an ardent love towards
the First Cause, God Himself ; we find that even our processes of
reasoning are faulty until they are touched with the Divine
tenderness, and rendered sympathetic by the infusion of a loftier
passion. And it is quite in accordance with this fuller truth that
both science and philosophy have made genuine progress only in
Christian lands and under Christian influences. Where the
touch of Christ's hand has been most decisively felt, in Germany,
in England, in America, and where consequently Wisdom has
attained a nobler, a richer, a more tender significance, there,
under fostering powers, which are not the less real because they
are not always acknowledged, the great discoveries have been
made, the great systems of thought have been framed, and the
great counsels of conduct have gradually assumed substance and
authority. And from a wide observation of facts we are able to
say, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and
knowledge " ; yes, but the wisdom of God has led us on from fear
to love, and in the love of the Lord is found the fulfilment of that
which trembled into birth through fear.^

One in a vision saw a woman fair;
In her left hand a water jar she bare,

And in her right a burning torch she held
That shed around a fierce and ruddy glare.

' R. F. Horton.

2o8 THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM

Sternly she said, " With fire I will burn down
The halls of Heaven ; with water I will drown

The fires of Hell, — that all men may be good
From love, not fear, nor hope of starry crown.

The fear of punishment, the lust of pay,
With Heaven and Hell shall also pass away,

And righteousness alone shall fill each heart
With the glad splendour of its shining ray."

Such is the Hindoo legend quaintly told
In Bernard Picart's famous folio old ;

And 'neath this symbol ethnical, we may
A moral for the present time behold.

When fear of punishment and greed of pay
Shall faint and die in Love's serener day,

Then shall the Kingdom of the Lord arrive
And earth become the Heaven for which we pray.'

» W. E. A. Axon.

Trust in the Lord.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL — 14

Literature.

Buckland (A. E.), Text Studies for a Year, 53.

Church (R. W.), Fillage Sermons, i. 172.

Howatt (J. R.), The Children's Angel, 104.

Liddon (H. P.), University Sermons, i. 139.

McCheyne (R. M.), Additional Remains, 142.

Rowlands (D.), in Comradeship and Character, 237.

Stalker (J.), The New Song, 118.

Talmage (T. de W.), Sermons, vii. 176.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xxvii. (1904), No. 7.

Christian World Pulpit, vii. 405 (F. Wagstatt) ; xvii. 324 (J. M. Charlton).

Church oj England Magazine, xxxi. 128 (W. T. Veruon).

Trust in the Lord.

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart,

And lean not upon thine own understanding :

In all thy ways acknowledge him,

And he shall direct thy paths.— Prov. iii. 5, 6.

There are two ways in which people pass through life. They
pass through it remembering God, or they pass through it for-
getting Him. They go through it with Him in their minds,
though they cannot see Him ; or they go through it as if they
had nothing to do with Him. They live as if this world were all
they had to think about, or they remember that another life is
coming, though they know they have to die in this world. And,
of course, in what they do, this great difference shows itself. If
people have not God and eternity in their thoughts, how is it
possible that they should do anything as if they had ? How can
they try to please God, whom they never think of ? And how
can they give themselves any trouble to be prepared for eternity,
when eternity is nothing but a mere word and sound to them,
meaning nothing? But if they really have the greatness and
mercy and judgment of God continually in their minds, they must
either be openly rebelling against the light, or else they cannot
help shaping their lives by the awful truths they believe, and
living as those who must soon pass away from here to meet the
Judge and Saviour of the quick and the dead. Either they are wise
in their own eyes — that is, they trust themselves and the present
world for everything they wish and work for, and feel no want of
God, nor care for what He promises — or they acknowledge Him
in all their ways ; they think of His eye. His will. His hand, to
uphold or cast down, to guide or to chastise, in all that they
undertake through their life. Either they " lean upon their own
understanding " ; they are satisfied with what they see and have
learnt about the ways and wisdom and good things of this present

212 TRUST IN THE LORD

world, and will not listen even to God, when He tells them a
different story about what men think so much of here ; or they
trust in the Lord with all their heart, knowing that " it is not in
man that walketh to direct his steps," and that it would profit a
man nothing if he were to " gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul."

I.

A Prohibition.

"Lean not upon thine own understanding."

1. These words presuppose the existence of sin, of actual dis-
order, of want of harmony between fallen man and the moral
universe. Were it not so, they could have neither meaning nor
propriety, and would certainly never have been written. To
write the former part, " Trust in the Lord," would have been
unnecessary ; to write the latter, " Lean not upon thine own
understanding," would have been improper. It is quite natural
for a sinless being to lean upon his own understanding; it is
indeed a positive virtue in him to do so ; it is, in fact, but one
form of trusting in God. For who gave us our understanding ?
Who endowed us in the beginning with the light of reason ?
Who conferred upon us those intellectual faculties which make us
differ from the brute creation ? " It is he that hath made us, and
not we ourselves ; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture."
H^ gave us understanding for a purpose: that it might be our
unfailing guide throughout the journey of life. To doubt the
credibility of the understanding — the understanding unadulterated
by sin — would therefore be a reflection upon God's wisdom and
goodness. The understanding in man is analogous to instinct in
inferior animals. In following ibstinct, the animal obeys God ;
for instinct is God's law implanted in its nature, and compliance
with it is invariably attended with beneficial results. To man,
however, in his present state — sinful, polluted, degraded as he is
— no advice can be more appropriate than this : " Lean not upon
thine own understanding."

^ If I had to single out any particular verses in the Bible
which I am conscious of having influenced me most it would be

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 213

those which were taught me when a boy and which I long after-
wards saw on the wall in General Gordon's room in Southampton :
" Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, lean not unto thine own
understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall
direct thy paths." ^

^ When the prophet Jeremiah expressed himself thus, " 0
Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself : it is not in
man that walketh to direct his steps," he spoke words which we
must all feel to be true, each one of his own self. Now, there is
an uncertainty, a want of fixed purpose, a hesitation, a going
backwards and forwards, an openness to any crafty temptation,
an unsettled, infirm condition of mind, a wrong choice of objects,
when a man " leans upon his own understanding," and is " wise in
his own eyes." His steps are uncertain, his ways crooked, his
principles shifting with the world in which, and for which, he
lives : his whole course of action is measured out to him by the
opinions of others as unsettled as himself : he is like a wave of
the sea, tossed to and fro, at the mercy of every breath of ridicule
and temptation that passes over him.^

2. Yet this prohibition must have its limits. To live in utter
disregard of our understanding, to allow our mental powers to be
atrophied through want of exercise, would lead to the most
disastrous consequences. Such a life would be the life of an idiot
or a madman — dreary, mean, and purposeless. Every step by
which we impair our understanding is a step in the direction of
idiocy and madness ; every chance of cultivating our intellect we
let slip is a lost opportunity of perfecting our manhood. True,
human nature can no longer boast of the exquisite harmony,
beauty, and perfection which belonged to it in its primeval state ;
still, it is glorious in its fall, it is grand in its ruin; there yet
linger about its shattered powers traces of the Divine image
which sin has so miserably effaced. Our supreme desire, then,
should be salvation — the salvation of the body, of the soul, of the
entire man — the restoration of our nature to its original wonder-
ful greatness. That man is engaged in the noblest occupation
who, being awakened to a sense of his own dignity through the
regenerating influence of God's Spirit, eagerly devotes himself to
the pursuit of truth and the cultivation of his understanding.
Ignorance can never be bliss; much less can ignorance be the

1 W. T. stead, in Books TVhich Have Influenced Me, 41. ^^f. T. Vernon.

214 TRUST IN THE LORD

mother of godliness. It is knowledge of the truth that brings
freedom, and a cultivated understanding is a Godlike possession.

^ As the late Dean Church, himself a Dante student, says of
Hooker, we may say of Dante, that he found, as the guide of
human conduct, " a rule derived not from one alone, but from all
the sources of light and truth with which man finds himself en-
f compassed." And again : " His whole theory rests on the principle
that the paramount and supreme guide, both of the world and of
human action, is reason." "The concurrence and co-operation,
each in its due place, of all possible means of knowledge for man's
direction." " Conceiving of law as reason under another name, he
conceived of God Himself as working under a law, which is His
supreme reason, and appointing to all His works the law by which
they are to work out their possible perfection. Law is that which
binds the whole creation, in all its ranks and subordinations, to
the perfect goodness and reason of God. Every law of God is a
law of reason, and every law of reason is a law of God." ^

II.

A Precept.

1. " Trust in the Lord with all thine heart." This is a remark-
able anticipation of New Testament teaching : " We walk by faith,
not by sight." "Without faith it is impossible to please God."
The trust we should repose in God admits of no limit or modifica-
tion. This reminds us of the great commandment in the law,
" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength."
Thus, whatever we do in reference to God, whether we love Him,
trust Him, or serve Him, it must be done with a heartiness, a
reality, an earnestness which cannot for a moment be doubted.

It takes a long time to learn to trust in the Lord, and to
acknowledge Him in all our ways. Those who try most to do so,
who wish most to leave themselves, and all that belongs to them,
to His manifest ordering — who have most reason to hope that they
have o'wew up trusting to their own understanding and wisdom in
what concerns this life here — are reminded to the last how im-
perfectly they have learnt the lesson ; how often, without knowing
' H. B. Garrod, Dante, Ooethis Faust, and other Lectures, 75.

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 215

it, they are setting their will before God's will, and fancying that
they know better than God what is best for them. And if this is
so with those who try to leave themselves in God's hands, how
shall they who never seriously try at all be able to do so when the
time of trouble comes ?

^ Faith is not mere belief ; but such belief as leads us to have
confidence in God — confidence in what He is to us, and does for us,
and asks of us, with the necessary implication of a response on our
part. And when we speak of a living, or lively faith, we mean a
faith by which we live in conscious response to God's love and its
demands upon us ; trusting Him for to-morrow because we know
that we are obeying Him to-day.^

^ Faith is that temper of sympathetic and immediate response
to Another's will which belongs to a recognized relationship of
vital communion. It is the spirit of confident surrender, which
can only be justified by an inner identification of the life. Unless
this inner relationship be a fact, faith could not account for itself :
but if it be a fact, it must constitute a fixed and necessary demand
upon all men. All are, equally, "children of God"; and the
answer to the question, " Why should I believe ? " must be, for
ever and for all, valid : " because you are a child of God." Faith
itself lies deeper than all the capacities of which it makes use : it
is, itself, the primal act of the elemental self, there at the root of
life, where the being is yet whole and entire, a single personal
individuality, unbroken and undivided. Faith, which is the
germinal act of our love for God, is an act of the whole self, there
where it is one, before it has parted off into what we can roughly
describe as separate and distinguishable faculties.*

2. "In all thy ways acknowledge him." Here we have a
sample of the almost untranslatable pregnancy and power of
Hebrew speech. The English word " acknowledge " represents
only one of the many meanings which are to be found in the
original term. This word, originally meaning " to see," came to
signify that which results from sight, unless the sense be imperfect
or the understanding impaired, namely, knowledge. It exhibits
knowledge at all its stages of growth. It stands for a knowledge
of isolated facts, and for a knowledge of facts in their largest
combinations. It describes a mere act of perception, an un-
suspected discovery, a stern experience inflicted upon the dull
* J. R. Illingworth, Christian Character. ^ H. S< Holland in Lux Mundi,

2i6 TRUST IN THE LORD

understanding; it pictures casual acquaintance and the closest
possible intimacy; it is used of knowledge by name and of
knowledge face to face. It is used of the moral sense recognizing
moral good or moral evil, and of the affections gaining knowledge
of their object through being exercised on it. It depicts the
movements, not merely of the heart and the intellect, but also of
the will. It thus represents sometimes the watchful, active care of
God's loving Providence, sometimes the prostrate adoration of a
soul, in which knowledge of its Divine Object has passed into
the highest stage, and is practically inseparable from worship.
As used in the passage before us, it describes nothing less compre-
hensive than the whole action of man's spiritual being when face
to face with the Eternal God. To " know " God in truth is to
believe in Him, to fear Him, and to love Him, with all the heart,
with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength ; to
worship Him, to give Him thanks, to put our whole trust in Him,
to call upon Him, to honour His holy Name and Ilis Word, and
to serve Him truly.

(1) In order to acknowledge God truly there must he a real
conviction that God rules the world. — An atheist, who believes that
no God exists, or a theist, who believes in His existence but not
in His active government of earthly things, or a fatalist, who
dreams that all things proceed by an iron necessity which nothing
can change — not one of these men can really acknowledge God as
the text requires. It is presupposed that we believe in the
existence of an almighty, free, intelligent Spirit, from whom all
things have sprung, and on whom all things depend ; that He fills
the whole universe with His presence, or illumines it with His
smile ; that He is guiding, controlling, and disposing all its affairs
for the consummation of holy and glorious purposes ; that He
cares for the well-being of all His creatures, from the highest
seraph who flames before His throne down to the little sparrow
which cannot fall to the ground until He permits it ; that He has
special care for the dignity and well-being of men, and most of all
for those who fear Him or who hope in His mercy. A settled
conviction of all this is essential to a right acknowledgment of
God. If there be no God, it is unreasonable to acknowledge any.
If God be not a free or almighty intelligence, but a blind or neces-
sary force, we may as well do homage to the storm that lays waste

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 217

our fields, or to the earthquake that converts our home into ruins.
If God has no care for the concerns of this lower world, to acknow-
ledge Him is useless ; if He acts in all things quite independently
of our conduct, acknowledging Him is an impertinence. If He is
not graciously disposed to accept our prayer and our trust, we
may as well give them to the winds. In a word, in order to yield
any acknowledgment of God which is worthy of the name, there
must be that state of mind described by the Apostle as the
condition of all acceptable coming to God — the belief " that he is,
and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

(2) It follows that we must have communion with Him. — It is
impossible that any one can really be acknowledging God — can
be thinking of anything but worldly things — who does not pray
by himself in secret, and pray every day regularly. Therefore, if
any one knows that he does not take care to say his private
prayers to God daily, there is at once a proof and a warning to
him that he is not acknowledging God, that he is living without
God in the world. He may be as industrious and quiet and
respectable and kind-hearted as possible, but he is living without
religion, as one who has only this life to pass through, and has no
everlasting state waiting for him after he is dead. Private, secret
prayer, offered to God daily and regularly, is the one great proof
whether we believe and trust in God. If this proof is not there,
then it is certain that, whatever we may say or do, we do not in
our hearts believe God, or fear Him.

(3) Then, to acknowledge God in all our ways is honestly to
admit to Him in each particular case that the matter is in His
hands, and that it is to be ordered as He may see fit. We are pre-
sumed to feel that God is actively present in all the concerns of
this world, from the least to the greatest. Our own concerns,
therefore, are neither too vast nor too trifling to engage His
attention. Small as things may be in themselves, they are still
parts of the great whole, links in the chain which girds the world \
and reaches up into the hand of God. The breath which stirs
the seared leaf is a part of the mighty force which wheels the
planets in their courses ; and He who keeps the spheres movino- in
measured harmony numbers the hairs of our heads. Thus, to
acknowledge God in all our ways is just to tell Him all this, it
is just to advert emphatically to His presence as with us, to regard

2i8 TRUST IN THE LORD

each interest of our lives as placed in His hands, to view every
event in the light that streams from His throne, always to feel,
wherever we are or whatever we are doing, that we are in closest
connexion with God, and to make a solemn acknowledgment of
this.

(4) Along with all this there is to be a sincere dependence upon
God for direction and help. — This is the practical bearing of our
conscious reference to God. In the absence of this it is useless to
believe in His supreme rule, or to advert to His universal presence.
A devout regard to God, indeed, cannot but be pleasing in His
sight, and it is a healthy state of soul. Whatever is right in
itself cannot fail to be practically useful. But such a devout
regard implies humble reliance upon His guidance. It is a kind
of faith spread like a leaf of gold over our whole life; or, to
change the figure, it is to live and breathe in the very atmosphere
of prayer, though no formal petition may escape our lips. To
acknowledge God in all our ways is to acknowledge His goodness
and wisdom in guarding our interests; and the very thought
cannot but inspire us with a humble, trustful reliance, and call
forth now and tlien earnest entreaty from the depth of the soul.
To acknowledge God is not to recognize His presence and remain
blind to His perfections ; it is not to mark the working of His
hand and forget the goodness of His heart ; or to believe that He
is ever surrounding us as a watchful friend, and yet not yield Him
our confidence or utter to Him our prayer. Acknowledgment
of such a Being must, in the nature of things, include faith, and
without this it would be only a lifeless form — a skeleton of religion
without its soul.

^ I am often tempted to trust too much to you ; not, I think,
to believe your wisdom, and gentleness, and patience, and faith
to be greater than they are, but to think too much that I was to
trust to them in you, instead of in God, because I have not felt
Him to be an ever-present guide, not only into the mysteries of
His own Love, not only into the meaning of past wants, but into
the grounds of all right and all wise action. This and this only
has confused me ; all has been ordered to teach me, all to
strengthen me; and I alone am wrong. Only with these
thoughts others mingle ; I must not, in order to recover faith in
a Director, give up the direction He places in my way ; I must
not mistake self-will for conscience, nor impatience for honesty.

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 219

No one on earth can distinguish them for me ; but He will. It
so often seems to me as if two different courses of action were
right or might be right ; and this is what puzzles me, even though
it is a blessing as bindiug me to people of widely different
opinions.^

^ On reflection I felt that I was going to make a grand fiasco
in Berlin, and compromise a career which, tolerably brilliant at
the outset, had already brought on me much resentment, as well as
calumnies and attacks of which I have not ceased to be proud.
The idea was unbearable, and I felt that, in the interest of The
Times, as well as in my own interests, it would be better for me
not to go to the Congress. . . . Just then my young friend was
announced. I had not seen him for a long time, and had positively
allowed him to slip my memory. Here I must confess that I have
a theory which will, perhaps, be ridiculed, but which has governed
my whole life. I believe in the constant intervention of a Supreme
Power, directing not only our destiny in general, but such actions
of ours as influence our destiny. When I see that nothing in
Nature is left to chance, that immutable laws govern every move-
ment, that the faintest spark that glimmers in the firmament
disappears and reappears with strict punctuality, I cannot suppose
that anything to do with mankind goes by chance, and that every
individuality composing it is not governed by a definite and in-
flexible plan. The great men whose names escape oblivion are
like the planets which we know by name, and which stand out
from among the multitude of stars without names. We know
their motions and destinies. We know at what time the comet
moving in infinite space will reappear, and that the smallest
stars, whose existence escapes us, obey the fixed law which governs
the universe. . . . Everything moves by a fixed law, and man is
master of his own destiny only because he can accept or refuse, by
his own intervention and action, the place he should fill and the
path traced out for him by the general decree which regulates
the movements of every creature. By virtue of this theory it will
be easily understood that I have always endeavoured to diviue
the intentions and designs of the Supreme Will which directs us.
I have always sought not to thwart that ubiquitous guidance, but
to enter on the path which it seemed to point out to me. As, at
the very time that the idea of going to Berlin plunged me in
despair, my door opened and I saw my young friend enter, it
struck me that he was destined to assist me in the accomplishment
of the task devolving on me in Berlin. ... At the very hour on
the 13th of July when the treaty of 1878 was signed in Berlin, a

^ Life of Octavia Hill, 155.

220 TRUST IN THE LORD

London telegram announced that The Times had published the
preamble and sixty-four articles, with an English translation
appended.^

III.
A Promise.

"He shall direct thy paths."

1. This is not a mere arbitrary promise. If we trust God with
all our heart, and acknowledge Him in all our ways, we have
within us the guarantee of sure guidance. God has placed man's
happiness in his own keeping; and by true submission to the
Divine will man is able to " lay hold on eternal life." The
Kingdom of God is within. It comes not with observation. Its
rewards are the continued extension of the soul's capacities ; its
treasures are incorruptible, laid up beyond the power of rust or
robber. Surrendering ourselves, not to a blind destiny, but to
the guidance of holy and eternal principles, we are unconcerned
about the future. Precisely what that future may bring forth we
know not; but the unknown is to us neither mysterious nor
terrible. Our delight being in the Lord, that is, in the integrity
and holiness of His will, we know that He will give us the desires
of our heart. Waiting patiently for Him, and committing our
ways unto Him, we know that He "shall bring it to pass."
Clouds and darkness may befall us, but we know that He, the
eternal Sun, is above the clouds, and will, sooner or later, shine
upon us.

O end to which our currents tend,

Inevitable sea,
To which we flow, what do we know,

What can we guess of thee ?

A roar we hear upon thy shore,

As we our course fulfil ;
And we divine a sun will shine,

And be above us still.

^ Mr. Gladstone's speech on the second reading of the Eeform
Bill of 18GG, as a whole, ranks among the greatest of his per-

1 n. S. De Blowitz, Mij Memoirs, 132.

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 221

formances. The party danger, the political theme, the new
responsibility of command, the joy of battle, all seemed to trans-
figure the orator before the vision of the House, as if he were the
Greek hero sent forth to combat by Pallas Athene, with flame
streaming from head and shoulders, from helmet and shield, like
the star of summer rising effulgent from the sea. The closing
sentences became memorable : — " You cannot fight against the
future," he exclaimed with a thrilling gesture, " time is on our
side. The great social forces which move onwards in their might
and majesty, and which the tumult of our debates does not for a
moment impede or disturb — those great social forces are against
you ; they are marshalled on our side ; and the banner which we
now carry in this fight, though perhaps at some moment it may
droop over our sinking heads, yet it soon again will float in the
eye of Heaven, and it will be borne by the firm hands of the
united people of the three kingdoms, perhaps not to an easy, but
to a certain and to a not far distant victory." ^

2. How will this direction be effected ? Not by an audible
voice from heaven, not by the sudden appearance of angelic
messengers to point the way, not even by any undefinable and
irresistible persuasion, arising unaccountably within the mind, that
a certain path and no other is to be taken. Of miraculous inter-
position there is no need, and the time has gone by for supersti-
tion. No, God will guide men that acknowledge Him through
the working of their own minds and the counsels of others, by
opening new paths and placing fresh aids within their reach, by
influencing their souls through the teachings of His Spirit, and
preserving them from false signs by which they were wont to be
led astray.

(1) God sometimes leads us, and we know not how ; we cannot
say by what means it is. We are in the midst of difticulties, our
way seems hedged up, foes are on every side, snares are spread for
our feet, and darkness is on our prospects. No human help is
nigh, and possibly, if it were, it could not effect our deliverance.
We acknowledge God, and in the course of a short time all these
difficulties clear away as of themselves, the whole scene changes,
everything seems to fall into its right place, and we walk again at
large as free men. We cannot tell how the change is effected.
It appears as if the shadows of night had given place to the

* Morley, Lifi of Gladstone, ii. 203.

222 TRUST IN THE LORD

realities of day. We are like them that dreain, our mouth is
filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing. " The Lord
hath done great things for us." Such events as these are to be
foimd in all Christian experience. We cannot tell how God
directs our paths, but the direction itself is so real and so
marvellously brought about as to illustrate to our wondering
eyes His infinite wisdom and power.

^ On one of the Irish lakes there is a particular spot where
there appears no possible means of exit; you may be within
twenty yards of the right course, and yet beat about for hours
without finding it. But the experienced boatman can make his
way to it in a few minutes. So it is often in human affairs.
Your frail bark may be tossed about for days upon the cold
waters ; you are surrounded by hills which form an enclosed
prison, and all escape seems cut off, but acknowledge God, and
the path before hidden gleams up in brightness before you, and
you wonder that you had not seen it before.^

(2) God often directs us by obstacles and delays. We want
to proceed in a certain direction, and to gain a certain point. We
acknowledge God therein, and the only response is that He
appears to cast up loftier barriers in our way, and to render our
progress still more difficult and perplexing. How is this ? For
a time we are ready to faint in despair ; but gradually it becomes
clear, in the light of the events themselves, that these barriers
were safeguards, breaks to check a too impetuous descent down
the incline, or stepping stones to help us over a mountain eleva-
tion which could not otherwise have been scaled.

^ Two vessels may sail out from the same distant shore ; the
one, impatient to set sail, and to reach her destination as speedily
as possible, departs some days before the other, but thereby
encounters a storm, and is thrown some weeks behind. The gain
of a little time in the one case proves a heavy loss ; in the other,
the loss of a little time at first proves an immense gain afterwards.
Now, if the second vessel had been thus delayed awhile at first
under the direction of one who clearly foresaw the coming storm,
would not all men have said that the direction was most wise and
good ? So God often directs our paths. He holds us back from
coming danger; He keeps us, as it were, in the harbour of safety
until the storm has passed by, and though, during this time, we
chafe and fret, as if our hopes were gone, by-and-by, under smiling

» J. M. Cliailton.

PROVERBS III. 5, 6 223

skies, our vessel flies before the wind, leaps over the waves, and
enters with flying colours the long-desired haven. Then at length
are we filled with the assurance that Divine wisdom and goodness
have guided our voyage.^

(3) God sometimes seems to guide our way even by our very
enemies. They come forth in power to oppose us, to ruin our
plans, to thwart our objects, and the final result is that they
promote their accomplishment, and that in a degree which could
not otherwise have been attained. "We and they may be alike
blind to the real conditions of success ; but God, who knows all
the secret workings of causes, which are hidden from us, in this
way most effectually secures our ends.

^ I cannot say what very quiet, relying comfort there is in
doing everything quite openly and irrespective of the conse-
quences. We are weak and uncomfortable when we act for man's
view of things ; it is humbugging God in reality, not man, and as
surely as we do that we shall reap the reward. The things may
be comparatively small, but a very immense principle is involved
in them. It is most wonderful what power and strength are
given to us by living for God's view and not man's. I do many
things which are wrong, and I can say truly that, thanks to God,
I am comforted in all the troubles, because I do not conceal them
from Him. He is my Master, and to Him alone am I account-
able. If I own in my heart that I am culpable, I have such
comfort that I do not care what my fellow-man says. " Trust
in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding." ^

* J. M, Charlton, * General C. G. Gordon, Letters to His Sister, 23.

A

,.<■

The Two Paths.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 5

Literature.

Adams (J. C), The Leisure of God, 35.

Body (G.), The Life of Justificatioriy 175.

Brown (H. S.), Manliness, 83.

Guthrie (T.), Man and the Gospel, 274.

Hamilton (J.), Failh in God, 324.

Jeffrey (J.), The Way of Life, 50.

Kemble (C), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, ii. 199.

Lucas (H.), At the Parting of the Ways, 294.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 108.

Owen (J. W.), Some Australian Sermons, 158.

Parr (R. H.), The Path of the Just, 294.

Christian World Pulpit, xxv. 286 (W. M. Statham).

Church Family Newspaper, July 15, 1910 (A. F. W. Ingram),

Homiletic Review, lix. 390 (R. L. Swain).

Literary Churchman, xxxv. (1889) 15 (J. E. Vernon).

Preacher's Magazine, vi. 513 (E. J. Ljrndon).

nt

The Two Paths.

But the path of the righteous is as the shining light,
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
The way of the wicked is as darkness :
They know not at what they stumble.— Prov. iv, i8, 19.

The " path " which a man pursues signifies, according to the most
usual meaning of the word, his style and manner of conduct, the
principles according to which he acts. Thus is the word used in
verse 11 of this chapter: "I have taught thee in the way of
wisdom ; I have led thee in right paths." There is another sense
in which we find the word "path" sometimes employed; it
indicates the condition or destiny of a man ; thus, in Job viii,
11-13, " Can the rush grow up without mire ? can the flag grow
without water ? Whilst it is yet in his greenness, and not cut
down, it withereth before any other herb. So are the paths of all
that forget God ; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish." In the
text " the path of the righteous " cannot properly be taken in either
of these senses exclusively ; it includes both. It signifies simply the
just man's course through life, comprising the development alike
of his own character and conduct and of his destiny as a child of
light. The word " light " is used here in a peculiar and limited
sense, to mean the dawn, the sunrise. So it is used, as our
English Bible expressly indicates, in Nehemiah viii. 3 : " And he
[Ezra] read therein before the street that was before the water gate,
from the light [from the morning] until midday." Only when we
consider this do we perceive the full force and beauty of the text.
" Perfect (i.e. steadfast, immovable) day " signifies, in the figurative
language of the text, noon. And in this we have an example of the
incompetency of that which is natural to express the spiritual and
eternal. In the day of the soul there is no mere momentary noon,
declining into afternoon and night. But what the thing could not
properly express, the word translated " perfect " is fitted to suggest.

228 THE TWO PATHS

Inverting the order of the text we shall conBider, first, the
way of darkness, and, secondly, the way of light.

Thb Wat of Darkness.

*' The way of the wicked is as darkness : they know not at what they
stumble."

These words present a picture of a man out on a dangerous
mountain track. He has determined upon going this way. He
has despised the advice and entreaties of the guides, although
aware that his track is beset with dangers. He was told before
he started of the deep ravines and yawning precipices. At times,
while trying to find his way, he feels the peril that he has
exposed himself to in venturing upon a path so dangerous, a path
with which he is totally unacquainted. Now the darkness is
coming on; but he still hopes to find his way. Presently the
darkness has completely hidden the path, and made it doubly
perilous. To stand still is to perish in the night; and yet he
cannot hope to find his way now, but wanders on in the darkness.
He does not know where he is, or where he is going ; the man is
lost in the dark ; he goes stumbling on till suddenly he stumbles
upon his fate and is lost in night.

1. The way of sin at the beginning. — Sin makes us do things we
should never think of doing in our right senses. It makes us the
subject of the cruellest delusion. To close our eyes against the
light is to surrender to the devil, who leads us captive at his will
into ever-deepening darkness.

^ " There are none so blind as those who will not see," and it
is really astonishing to notice how determined many people are
not to see what their sinful course must lead to and must end in.
I have very seldom known, indeed I do not remember a single
case, in which either disease, or pain, or early death, or poverty,
or disgrace, or imprisonment, or madness, or any other result of
wrong-doing, acted to any great extent as a warning to others
pursuing the same way to destruction. The effect, if there be
any effect at all, soon passes off. Not a week passes but some
one is detected in fraud and embezzlement, but every other thief

PROVERBS IV. i8, 19 229

thinks himself cunning enough to be safe. "Dead through
excessive drinking " is the verdict given day by day, all the week
through, and all the year round ; but every other excessive
drinker thinks that he does not drink to excess, or that he has a
constitution that will stand it. Thus, verily, "the way of the
wicked is darkness." ^

^ Where chiefly the beauty of God's working was manifested
to men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the
enduring of His indignation against sin. It seems one of the
most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions to turn the heart
away from this warning, and refuse to acknowledge anything in
the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. Men in
general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate such
things at all, most of them passing " by on the other side " either
in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of what
good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish
delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment.
What between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy
people, humble people, and cheerfully-minded people, giddiness
of youth, and preoccupations of age, — philosophies of faith, and
cruelties of folly, — priest and Levite, masquer and merchantman,
all agreeing to keep their own side of the way, — the evil that God
sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that He sends
to be mended by us gets left unmended. And then, because
people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in
front of them, their Faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by
every darkness in what is revealed to them. In the present day
it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest
thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole
system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of
the punishment of sin. But can he unravel the mystery of the
punishment of iVb sin ? . . . We cannot reason of these things.
But this I know — and this may by all men be known — that no
good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent
darkness; and that the universe presents itself continually to
mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good
and the evil set on the right hand and the left.^

2. The way of sin as it continues. — It is a road that runs
through sombre passes, like some of those paths far in the
heart of the mountains, on which the sun never shines. This is

* H. S. Brown, Manliness, 89.

• Ruskin, Modem Painters, vol. iv. chap. xix. § 82,

230 THE TWO PATHS

worse than the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for in the fearful
path of sin there is no guiding hand and no protecting staff. The
darkness of this course is exhaled from the evil committed
upon it.

^ The horrible features of Vanity Fair are carefully concealed
from the young man or woman setting out in life. Satan appears
then as an angel of light, with seductive air and promises of
boundless pleasure and enjoyment. The unhappy victim soon
begins to realize the deceitfulness of the tempter and the bitter-
ness of sin. As he rushes with the crowd of pleasure-seekers into
the haunts and circles of evil men, he becomes absorbed in their
follies and fashions ; opportunities of improvement are neglected,
facilities of progress are forgotten, virtuous habits are thrown off,
and care for higher things is neglected. By degrees, the mind
and spirit become the mere vassals of animal passion or selfish
gratification, and the day of life passes without any preparation
for a blessed future. Amid the whirl and excitement of pleasure-
seeking or money-hunting, there soon come hours of gloom and
sadness. The fruits of sin are like the fabled apples of Sodom,
fair to outside view but poisonous within. Many who frequent
gay and festive scenes carry into them sad and heavy hearts,
many of them cherish memories of days when innocence and truth
gave brightness to their souls ; many are haunted by lapses from
virtue, and deeds of evil which were committed perhaps long ago,
but which memory revives, until the heart sinks and the spirit
writhes beneath the rankling of the wound. As life creeps on,
the pursuit of sin becomes more irksome, the burden of a wounded
conscience becomes more rankling; and unless by a heartfelt
repentance, and an acceptance of mercy through Christ, the
transgressor returns to the Father's house, the end comes in
darkness.^

^ Of what Christians call " the Divine Government " — but
which he regarded as " the sum of the customs of matter," Huxley
believed it to be " wholly just." " The more I know intimately of
the lives of other men (to say nothing of my own)," he wrote,
" the more obvious it is to me that the wicked does not flourish,
nor is the righteous punished. But for this to be clear we must
bear in mind what almost all forget — that the rewards of life are
contingent upon obedience to the whole law — physical as well as
moral — and that moral obedience will not atone for physical sin,
or vice versa. The ledger of the Almighty is strictly kept, and
every one of us has the balance of his operations paid over to him

» W. J. Townsend, The Ladder of Life, 256.

PROVERBS IV. i8, 19 231

at the end of every minute of his existence. The absolute justice
of the system of things is as clear to me as any scientific fact.
The gravitation of sin to sorrow is as certain as that of the earth
to the sun, and more so — for experimental proof of the fact is
within reach of us all — nay, is before us all in our own lives, if
we had but eyes to see it." ^

3. The way of sin as it ends. — The sinner has no prospect of
light beyond. There are no Beulah heights for him at the farther
end of the gloomy valley. His night of sin will be followed by
no dawn of blessed light. He presses on only to deeper and yet
deeper darkness. If he will not return, there is nothing before
him but the darkness of death. The one way of escape is back-
wards— to retrace his steps in humble penitence. Then, indeed,
he may see the welcome light of his Father's home, and even
earlier the Light of the world, the Saviour who has come out
into the darkness to lead him back to God. For the sinner who
persists in his evil course there can be no better prospect than
that described by Byron in his poem on " Darkness " —

The world was void.
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death — a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still.
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge —
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them — She was the Universe.

^ The death of Lord Pembroke, whose character and aims
Spencer estimated very highly, removed one more from the ever
narrowing circle of his friends and acquaintances. To the
Countess of Pembroke he wrote on 26th June 1895 : " On the
great questions you raise I should like to comment at some length
had I the energy to spare. The hope that continual groping,
though in the dark, may eventually discover the clue is one I can

1 Life of T. H. Huxley, by his Son, i. 220.

232 THE TWO PATHS

scarcely entertain, for the reason that human intelligence appears
to me incapable of framing any conception of the required kind.
It seems to me that our best course is to submit to the limita-
tions imposed by the nature of our minds, and to live as con-
tentedly as we may in ignorance of that which lies behind things
as we know them. My own feeling respecting the ultimate
mystery is such that of late years I cannot even try to think of
infinite space without some feeling of terror, so that I habitually
shun the thought."*

II.

The Shining Way.

" The path of the rigfhteous is as the shining light, that shineth more and
more unto the perfect day."

1. The " path of the righteous " has all the great characteristics
suggested by light, namely, truth, purity, joy, life. Perhaps the
leading idea is that of holy gladness. In Scripture the favourite
emblem of heaven and the heavenly, of God and the godly, is light,
— of the evil power and the evil place, darkness ; and none could
be more striking and expressive. It is expressive of all the
phenomena of the two contrasted worlds, alike in their nature, in
their origin, and in their consequences. And light, as symbolical
of the good, speaks to us of enlightenment of the understanding,
the purity of holiness, and true happiness, even as darkness speaks
to us of the opposites. Light means wisdom and holiness; and
thus the Apostle Paul, writing to the Ephesians, uses it: "Ye
were sometimes darkness " (i.e. foolish and unholy), " but now are
ye light in the Lord " : your ignorance, that is to say, has been
dispelled by the knowledge in Christ of the Holy God and recon-
ciled Father. " Walk as children of light " ; act, that is, in
accordance with those principles of heavenly wisdom wherewith
your darkened understanding has been enlightened, and shine in
the bright purity of holiness. The just man, then, is a child of
light, first of all, because through Divine grace he has been endued
with wisdom, and has the seeds of holiness implanted within him.

^ The message of Fox was to make men realize that individual
inspiration was not a thing of the past, and that true assurance

* D. Duncan, The Lift and Letters of Herbert Spencer, 370.

PROVERBS IV. ig, 19 233

and guidance were open to every man who would follow the in-
ward illumination. Attention to this inner .light resulted in the
discovery of sin and of the overcoming life in Christ. "Every
one of you hath a light from Christ which lets you see you should
not lie, nor do wrong to any nor swear nor curse nor take God's
name in vain, nor steal. It is the light that shows you these
evil deeds : which, if you love and come unto it and follow it, will
lead you to Christ who is the way to the Father, from whom it
comes : where no unrighteousness enters nor ungodliness. If you
hate this light it will be your condemnation : but if you love it
and come to it, you will come to Christ." The important thing
for men to realize is that they have the witness of God in their
own hearts against moral evils. It is not any outward code,
scriptural or social, which reveals sin as sin, but the light of God
in the conscience. If men would humbly and patiently wait
upon God, the path of obedience would be made plain and the
power to obey be abundantly bestowed.^

2. The life of the righteous is a life of increasing lustre. Like
the light, it shineth " more and more." The day does not burst
upon the earth at once. The night does not vanish and come to
an end in a moment. There is a slow and gradual change; at
first a very faint light far away in the eastern sky, while all the
rest is dark ; then it spreads gently wider and higher, and wakes
up all things to a new life, bringing to sight mountains and
valleys, streams and woods, which lay but now in the thick dark-
ness, as though they were not. Then, at last, when all the
shadows have grown pale, and the flood of shining light has
poured its streams into every secret place, so that there is night
and darkness no more — then the glorious sun comes forth, " like
a giant refreshed," at first indeed made dim by the mists that
still hang upon the earth, but soon breaking through, as it were,
till he rides high in the clear sky, and, with the full power of his
light and heat, pours down upon earth " the perfect day." But it
is not always so. There are mornings of a difi'erent sort. Some-
times clouds and storms come with the breaking day. The sullen
thunder-cloud, or the heavy gloom of mists and rain, half hide the
feeble light. The sun passes behind great folds of heavy cloud,
and you can see his rays only now and then through some rent or
opening in the curtain that hides him from view. But he stays

» H. G. Wood, George Fox, 28.

234 THE TWO PATHS

not, he changes not, in his course. He fulfils his daily round.
He is the same, whatever else may be. And, whether it be in
calm, or whether it be in storm, the light " shineth more and more
unto the perfect day."

Such is the parable of the text. The path of the righteous
begins like the light of dawn. It is small in its beginning. The
new-born Christian is like a rising sun struggling through the
mists of morn. It must travel to its noon. Moving in the skies,
far beyond all malign influence of earth, no hand but that of the
Creator can stay it in its onward progress. Black clouds may
steal it from the eye, but no cloud touches its fiery rim. Behind
and above the cloud, it travels to its noon. For us its brightness
may be absorbed in darkness, but in itself it shineth bright as
ever. Even so is it with the Christian. Far above and beyond
the malign influences of this sinful world, he too travels to his
everlasting noon. No hand but the hand of the Almighty
Kedeemer, who set him forth on his glorious course, can touch him.
Clouds of sorrow, and it may be clouds of sin, may dim his glory
to the earthly eye, or leave him even in black eclipse ; but behind
the darkness he proceedeth from height to height, climbing the
heavens.

^ " Divine grace " (says Leighton, on 1 Pet. i. 7), " even in
the heart of weak and sinful man, is an invincible thing. Drown
it in the waters of adversity, it rises more beautiful, as not being
drowned indeed, but only washed : throw it into the furnace of
fiery trials, it comes out purer, and loses nothing but the dross
which our corrupt nature mixes with it." It belongeth then, by
very necessity of nature, to the child of God that he grow — grow,
so to speak, in bulk of spiritual life, grow in strength of all spiritual
faculties, grow in largeness of spiritual result. Where there is no
growth, there is no life. The path of the just is as the shining light,
which shineth more and more.^

(1) Growth in the spiritual life is the gradual unfolding within
of the powers of a life communicated to us. There is a super-
natural life within the justified, for through union with the
Incarnate Word we have received from Him the life that is in
Himself. The life of God dwells without measure in the Son, and
passes in measure into His members. In the justified this gift
of life is no longer dormant, but is stirred up, and becomes an

' J. Hamilton, Faith in Qod, 334.

PROVERBS IV. i8, 19 235

active principle within, as its presence is recognized and responded
to. This life, thus willingly yielded to, is ever manifesting its
vigour in the inward growth. As in nature, so in grace, the babe
becomes the child, the child develops into the young man, the
young man ripens into the father. But there cannot be this growth
in the Divine life without the communication to us, through the
Holy Ghost, of the life of God, and our surrender to it by
repentance and faith. It will not do to imagine that a man may
live and die in darkness, and that then a dazzling light will be
shed upon him, like some splendid garment outside him, which
will make him all at once meet for the inheritance of the saints
in light. No, the light must be within, kindled in the soul,
growing there, cleansing and beautifying it ; the soul must grow
in the light. This is what we call the internal glory, the growth
of the character in beauty.

Tj Throughout these pages [of his annotated Bible], we are con-
stantly impressed by the large mental frontier of Smetham — his
range of faculty, his many-sidedness. Here is a fragrant wild
flower of the sermonic type, which crops up in that paradise of
perfumed philosophy, Solomon's Proverbs. It elucidates that
celestial metaphor of the soul's advancement, " The path of the
just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day." The annotation is this : " The nature of the light
remains the same. The first feeble ray of the morning has the
same chemical elements as those of the brightest noon. So with
Christian character." ^

(2) To walk in the light gives expansion to all man's capacities.
There is no mental or moral faculty of human nature which is not
improved and perfected by walking in the path which leads to
eternal life. This results from close and constant association with
the Christ, who is the treasury of wisdom and knowledge, and the
sum of all excellence. Intimate fellowship with Him is health-
giving in the highest degree. It means purity of atmosphere, for
He takes us to the mount of vision above the fogs and vapours of
impurity and sin ; it means strength, because He is the Bread of
Life, of which if a man eat he lives for ever ; it means growth on
every side of life, because the Christians say : " Of his fulness have
all we received, and grace for grace." Thus in Him and through
Him the Christian is perfected.

* W. G. Beardmore, Jama Smetham, Painter, Poet, Essayist, 82.

236 THE TWO PATHS

^ When Christian was passing through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death it was night, and he could scarcely see his way,
but the day began to break as he came near the end of the first
part of it, and the sun shone ever brighter and brighter upon the
more dangerous part of the valley, so that he was able to walk
more safely. Then said he, " His candle shineth on my head, and
by His light I go through the darkness." And so, while there
may be but a feeble light on your path when you first begin to
love and serve Jesus, it will grow brighter like the rising sun as
you continue to do so.^

(3) " Unto the perfect day." At this point the simile of the
text fails. Here the sun rises but to set ; it travels to its midday
splendour only to give place to midnight gloom. It is not so there :
her " sun shall no more go down," for " there is no night there."
Here light streams to us from God only through created media of
His appointment. He " made two great lights ; the greater light
to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night : he made
the stars also " (Gen. i. 16), and through them light streams from
Him to us. Hence it is in nature as it is in grace; light and
darkness are constantly interchanged, whilst we receive His gifts
through created media. But in the Heavenly Country there is
no such change, because " the Lord himself is her everlasting light,"
and the light that is in Him streams forth upon the children of
light in one unending day. Blessed permanence of that unending
day, that undecaying light ! There is no night there, thank God !
It is not advance and retrogression, but one unchecked progress ;
it is not the interchange of happiness and misery, but one unend-
ing song of the children of the day, revelling in the everlasting
light.

This means not only glory, but also the development of
humanity beneath the rays that stream from the light of God. It
is there that the hidden powers of the intellect are developed, and
the magnificence of mind is manifested. It is there that the
capacities of the heart to love are recognized, for there alone its
hidden depths are sounded. It is there that the wondrous
energies of the spirit are unfolded, in a degree now inconceivable
to us, as it is flooded with the vision of God. There, and there
only, is the grandeur of humanity realized, where the varied
capacities of each created nature attain their perfection. In the

» J. Jeffrey, The Way of Life, 52.

PROVERBS IV. i8, 19 237

imperfect there is no rest, but when we are perfect, "as he is
perfect, in the perfect day," then shall be realized by us the joy
of the sons of God.

^ When the organism of the oak and the environment which
fosters its growth unite to produce the sturdy king of the forest,
we consider ourselves justified in concluding that God meant an
oak-tree to be the outcome. And when we find a moral nature
so constituted that it tends to develop along the line of rectitude,
purity, and love, and an environment which offers the least
resistance in the direction of righteousness, it is a safe inference
that God purposed the development of that nature in the direction
of righteousness. When He made the way of transgressors hard,
and caused the path of the just to shine brighter and brighter unto
the perfect day, God pointed the direction in which our race was
to move. He indicated the destiny of man. He forecast the
consummation of the work of the ages. He foreshadowed in that
one fact the moral order and progress of man.

One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.^

^ Our destiny is potential within ourselves. Every man,
woman, and child possesses this potentiality, this shaping spirit of
prayer and the love of God. The golden stairs are in every home,
in every house of business, and workshop, whereby, in deep com-
munings like those of Jesus on the Galilean hills, we may bring
down troops of joys and graces to fill the common day with song.
It is our fault altogether if the lower chambers of life are dull
and spiritless. The task is difficult no doubt. So much the more
need for that steadfast communion with the Indwelling Love
which gives the soul a power and persistence not long to be
denied. Eesolute always to see what good there is, and to throw
the whole weight of our soul on to the side of that good, we shall
find our love consuming the evil, and liberating kindred souls to
co-operate with us.^

Through love to light, 0 wonderful the way
That leads from darkness to the perfect day !

From darkness and from sorrow of the night,
To morning that comes singing o'er the sea.
Through love to light; through light, 0 God, to Thee

Who art the Love of love, the eternal Light of light

^ J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God, 46.
» T. J. Hardy, The Gospel of Pain.

The Heart.

m

Literature.

Burgess (F. G.)) Little Beginnings, 117.

Calthrop (G.), The Lost Sheep Found, 153.

Davidson (T.), Thoroughness, 101.

Dewhurst (F. E.), The Investment of Truth, 107.

Fiirst (A.), Christ the Way, 12.

Gibbon (J. M.), In the Days of Youth, 28.

Griffith-Jones (E.), in Comradeship and Gharacter,25 3.

Jeffrey (J.), The Way of Life, 55.

Jerdan (C), For the Lambs of the Flock, 59.

King (T. S.), Christianity and Humanity, 254.

Mackenzie (E.), The Loom of Providence, 246.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 116.

Pierson (A, T.), Godly Self -Control, 1.

Rowland (A.), in The Ladder of Life, 33.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, iv. (1858), No. 179.

Stowell (H.), Sermons, 72.

Vaiighan (J.), Sermons to Children, i. 205.

Wagner (C.), Courage, 69.

Wiseman (N.), Sermons for Children, 116.

Christian World Pulpit, v. 132 (R. Tuck) ; Ixxv. 76 (W. E. BreakeyX

309 (J. H. Ward).
Church of England Magazine, xxv. 256 (J. Bull).
Church of England Pulpit, Ixii. 68 (W. R. Inge).

The Heart.

Keep thy heart with all diligence ;

For out of it are the issues of life. — Prov. iv. 23.

1. In the Bible, and more especially in the Book of Proverbs,
the word " heart " is among the most pregnant in all language.
As the heart physically is the central organ of the body, it is
often used to denote the life,, the soul itself. " My soul longeth,
yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord ; my heart and my
flesh cry out unto the living God." Then there is a large group
of passages which show that the heart in the Bible stands for the
seat of the emotions, as in the popular phraseology of every
language. But in Hebrew it also represented the seat of intelli-
gence, the tone and quality of the character, as when a clear,
pure, sincere heart is ascribed to any one, or when it is said, " As
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." Further, it stands for
will or purpose : " Do all that is in thine heart " means " in thine
intention or desire." Because the heart is thus the focus of the
personal life, the secret laboratory in which every influence which
penetrates thither is reacted upon, so that it passes out charged
with the colour and quality of the inner life, it is natural that it
should be spoken of here as the central fact of our nature, and
that God should demand it for His own. When we give our
heart to Him, we give Him the most precious, because the most
determinative, element in our life.

2. The Greek version, which was very generally used in our
Lord's time, had a beautiful variation of the text : " In order that
thy fountains may not fail thee, guard them in the heart." It
was after all but a new emphasis on the old teaching of the Book
of Proverbs when Jesus taught the necessity of heart purity, and
when He showed that out of the heart come forth evil thoughts,
and all the things which defile a man. Yet this lesson of inward-

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 6

242 THE HEART

ness has always been the most difficult of all to learn. Christian-
ity itself has always been declining from it and falling into the
easier but futile ways of externalism ; and even Christian homes
have usually failed in their influence on the young, chiefly because
their religious observances have fallen into formalism, and, while
the outward conduct has been regulated, the inner springs of
action have not been touched.

^ Visit the electrical power-house of any large town. Watch
the whirling dynamo. Here is the energy that drives the car;
here is generated the spark that lights the night ; here is born
the impulse that begets the motion and brightness outside.
Musing thus, you will understand what is meant by the heart.
Press the illustration further ; mark how this monster is guarded
and controlled, and then think of the last thunderstorm you can
remember. In the engine-house the power is in subjection,
watched with all diligence ; outside in the wide universe it is un-
tamed, uncontrolled, wrecking and damaging and contorting. On
the one hand, assisting commerce, giving brightness and cheerful-
ness— the issues of life. On the other, devastation and ruin — the
issues of death. Life and death by the same power. Controlled,
life ; uncontrolled, death. This power is analogous to the heart
of man.^

I.

The Centre of Life.

1. The heart that we carry in our body may rightly be called
the centre of life. The physical heart is a large bunch of muscles,
placed between the two lungs and acting as a fountain of life
to the whole body. How wonderful it is in its structure — its
auricles, and ventricles, its valves and blood-vessels ! " The blood
is the life " ; and every moment it is being driven by the unrest-
ing stroke of the heart's pump into the great arteries and all
through the body. The heart is the central organ of the human
frame ; and the health of the body depends upon its soundness
and its proper action. Only when this action is healthy and true
will the whole body be full of power, energy, and beauty. When,
on the other hand, the heart is feeble or diseased, it will send
languor and mischief through the whole system. This organ, in

» J. H. Ward.

PROVERBS IV. 23 243

short, is the mainspring, the determining factor in the life of the
body. The other organs work well or ill according to the state of
the heart.

2. But the Old Testament locates in the heart the centre of
personal being. It is not merely the home of the affections, but
also the seat of will, of moral purpose. As this text says, " the
issues of life " flow from it in all the multitudinous variety of their
forms. The stream parts into many heads, but it has one foun-
tain. To the Hebrew thinkers the heart was the indivisible,
central unity which manifested itself in the whole of the outward
life. " As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The heart is
the man. And that personal centre has a moral character which
comes to light in, and gives unity and character to, all his deeds.

(1) Out of the heart are the issues of life. It is not the mind,
the thought-power, the judgment-forming part of our nature that
holds the primacy and sits upon the throne. The mind, with its
thoughts, its judgments, its ideas, is the servant of our practical
needs. The mind, in fact, came into being, was organized and
developed because of our practical needs. It is not the regal
and aristocratic member of our being that it has sometimes been
assumed to be. It is a veritable slave and lackey, serving in
homespun, continually driven, and made to work overtime at the
whip's end of the dominant forces of life. Because primitive
man was conscious of hunger, he contrived a way to till the
ground, to plant, to reap, to grind and bake. The mind did not
invent bread, and then coax the appetite to eat, because bread
forsooth was good. Man was hungry ; the appetite was imperious
master, and it compelled the mind to find some way of satisfying
that need. Because man was naked, he also invented dress, first
from the skins of wild beasts, then from their woolly covering,
woven into a fabric. Because he was subjected to the wind and
the rain, to the sun and the frost, he drove the thinking part of
him to devise a tent and a roof, a protecting shelter from the
prowling lion, or a stockade against human foe. Here is the
invariable order : need — invention — satisfaction. And this is
actually all that the mind, with its knowledge, has ever done for
man ; in the last analysis it will always reduce to this — the dis-
covery of a way, continuously a better way, between these two

244 THE HEART

terms ; need, and the satisfaction of the need. Out of the heart
have been the issues of life from the outset. The needs, the
desires, the great passions, the urgent impulses — these have been
in control. It is they who have sat on the throne.

(2) The condition of the heart determines our influence. The
world over, the most potent force is not thought, but love. Argu-
ment often convinces while affection sways in a contrary direction.
A teacher's wisdom, with all the fascinations of the schools, moves
us less than a mother's pleading and tears. Even where masses
of men bow before eloquent oratory, it is the power of sincerity
and earnestness in the speaker that moves even those who differ.
We all instinctively feel that the secret of heroism is noble affec-
tion, unselfish love, and sacrifice. There is a sort of righteousness
that only awakens a cold admiration ; while goodness, which is
righteousness touched with love, leads men to die for its
possessor.

^ When Wilberforce, the great apostle of liberty in Europe,
was turning the world upside-down, one man asked another,
" What is the secret of the power of Wilberforce ? There are
many men with more brains and more culture." And his friends
answered, " The secret of Wilberforce is that he has a heart full
of sympathy." And that is the secret of multitudes of people who
are doing great good in the world. Do not keep guard over your
heart with the purpose only of keeping bad things out of it, but
keep watch over it to see that the fountains of sympathy and
brotherly kindness are open and flowing day by day.^

(3) That which goes so far to mould character and to shape
influence, must determine destiny. When the great judicial scales
of the Universal Judge are at last hung, it cannot be otherwise
than that the central affections should settle which way those
scales preponderate : what we have most truly loved must have
vital connexion with the eternal future — not only with the
entrance into Heaven, but the capacity for its joys. Our affections
both reveal what character essentially is and forecast what it is
to be — even more than our thoughts ; for the affections largely
prompt our habits of thought, determining what images we love to
contemplate. The essence both of sin and of holiness is largely
h«»re ; for the acts both of sin and of saintliness could have little

• L. A. Banks, 2'he Problems of Youth, 86.

PROVERBS IV. 23 245

t moral quality were there no moral preference behind them. It
is the love of evil that makes sin so damning, and the love of
' holiness that is the heart of sainthood. But for this heart
I affection for evil, how could the imagination be employed as sin's
artist, or memory as its treasure gatherer, or the will as its
marshal ? But for this, even the Devil's hook would be bare of
bait, and his wiles would find no response in us, as they found
none in our tempted Master.

^ In a letter to his mother at Scotsbrig, Carlyle writes from
Craigenputtock, in September 1833: "But I must tell you
something of myself: for I know many a morning, my dear
mother, you ' come in by me ' in your rambles through the world
after those precious to you. If you had eyes to see on these
occasions you would find everything quite tolerable here. I have
been rather busy, though the fruit of my work is rather inward,
and has little to say for itself. I have yet hardly put pen to
paper ; but foresee that there is a time coming. All my griefs, I
can better and better see, lie in good measure at my own door :
were I right in my own heart, nothing else would be far wrong
with me. This, as you well understand, is true of every mortal,
and I advise all that hear me to believe it, and to lay it practically
to their own case." ^

^ In the course of a walk in the park at Edgeworthstown, I
happened to use some phrase which conveyed (though not perhaps
meant to do so) the impression that I suspected Poets and
Novelists of being a good deal accustomed to look at life and the
world only as materials for art. A soft and pensive shade came
over Scott's face as he said, " I fear you have some very young
ideas in your head ; are you not too apt to measure things by
some reference to literature — to disbelieve that anybody can be
worth much care who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or
taste for it ? God help us ! what a poor world this would be if
that were the true doctrine ! I have read books enough, and
observed and conversed with enough of eminent and splendidly
cultivated minds, too, in my time ; but, I assure you, I have heard
higher sentiments from the lips of poor uneducated men and
women, when exerting the spirit of severe yet gentle heroism
under difficulties and afflictions, or speaking their simple thoughts
as to circumstances in the lot of friends and neighbours, than I
ever yet met with out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never
learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we

» J. A. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1835, ii. 368.

246 THE HEART

have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, com-
pared with the education of the heart." ^

^ Too soon did the Doctors of the Church forget that the
heart, the moral nature, was the beginning and the end ; and that
truth, knowledge, and insight were comprehended in its expansion.
This was the true and first apostasy, — when in council and synod
the Divine Humanities of the Gospel gave way to speculative
Systems, and Eeligion became a Science of Shadows under the
name of Theology, or at best a bare Skeleton of Truth, without
life or interest, alike inaccessible and unintelligible to the majority
of Christians. For these, therefore, there remained only rites and
ceremonies and spectacles, shows and semblances. Thus among
the learned the Substance of things hoped for passed into Notions ;
and for the unlearned the Surfaces of things became Substance.
The Christian world was for centuries divided into the Many that
did not think at all, and the Few who did nothing but think, —
both alike unreflecting, the one from defect of the act, the other
from the absence of an object.^

n.

The Keeping of the Heart.

" Keep thy heart above all keeping." God guards very care-
fully the heart He has put in our body. He has put the strongest
bones all round it, so that, though other parts may be easily hurt,
the heart is safe. Well, the text says that we should guard the
heart of our real lives in the same way " with all diligence," above
everything else ; because, if the heart goes wrong, the whole life
goes wrong with it.

^ One of the most famous and valuable diamonds in the world
is the " Koh-i-nur," or Mountain of Light, which belongs to the
British Crown. This gem was exhibited in the Great Exhibition
of 1851, and was an object of special interest. It lay upon a
little cushion in a case with glass panels, the inside being lighted
up with gas. And there was always a group of people crowding
to see it. But it was also an object of peculiar care. For while
the whole of the Crystal Palace, which contained so many
treasures, was well guarded, a special watchman paced to and fro

' Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, ch. Ixiii,
* Coleridge, Aids to JUJUclum.

PROVERBS IV. 23 247

by day and night to guard the "Koh-i-nur." Even so ought
every Christian, above all other valuables that he has to guard,
to " keep " his heart, for it is the citadel of his life.^

1. Our nature is evidently not a republic, but a monarchy.
It is full of blind impulses, and hungry desires, which take no
heed of any law but their own satisfaction. If the reins are
thrown on the necks of these untamed horses, they will drag the
man to destruction. They are safe only when they are curbed
and bitted, and held well in. Then there are tastes and inclina-
tions which need guidance and are plainly meant to be subordinate.
The will is to govern all the lower self, and conscience is to
govern the will. Unmistakably there are parts of every man's
nature which are meant to serve, and parts which are appointed
to rule, and to let the servants usurp the place of the rulers
is to bring about as wild a confusion within as the Preacher
lamented that he had seen in the anarchic times when he wrote
— princes walking and beggars on horseback. As George Herbert
has it —

Give not thy humours way;

God gave them to thee under lock and key.

^ Savage tribes not only fight with poisoned arrows ; they
have been known to creep into another tribe's country, and put
poison into the wells, so that when the tired soldier, the thirsting
woman and child, and the poor beasts of the forest came to the
well to slake their thirst, they drank death in every drop of water
that passed their lips. Now, would you think a chief stern, or
too particular, if at war-time he ordered his people to guard the
wells ? Would not such an order be a kind one ? Would not
the meaning of it be, " Save your own lives, and the lives of your
wives and children " ? Well, your heart, your mind, is the well
of your life. If that is poisoned, your best life will die. And
the Book that bids you guard it well is not a stern book, but a
kind, loving book, that wishes you well, and is your best friend.^

2. Keeping or guarding is plainly imperative, because there is
an outer world which appeals to our needs and desires, irrespec-
tive altogether of right and wrong, and of the moral consequences

^ C. Jordan, For the Lambs of the Flock, 63.
' J, M. Gibbon, Jn the Days of Youth, 32.

248 THE HEART

of gratifying these. Put a loaf before a starving man, and his
impulse will be to clutch and devour it, without regard to whether
it is his or not. Show any of our animal propensities its appro-
priate food, and it asks no questions as to right or wrong, but is
stirred to grasp its natural food. And even the higher and
nobler parts of our nature are but too apt to seek their gratifica-
tion without having the licence of conscience for doing so, and
sometimes in defiance of its plain prohibitions.

^ Many telegraph wires run under and over our streets, over
the mountains and under the oceans, coming from scenes of
war and of peace, of industry and of learning, of sorrow and of
joy, each carrying some swift current. And these wires are
gathered at last into some central office of many clicking instru-
ments. The operator translates these currents into intelligence,
and sends them out in the form of messages of commerce, of war,
of crime, or of love. So our five senses are main wires going out
into the world about us, gathering observations, sensations, and
experience from the streets of the city, the scenes of the country,
the companions we meet, the books we read, the pictures at
which we look. Another wire goes down, like an ocean cable,
into the depths of our own nature, bringing up mysterious
messages given by our own consciousness, speaking of God and
good, of right and wrong, and of judgment to come. Thus there
are wires from heaven above, on which God and good angels are
sending messages ; wires from hell below, on which the devil and
his angels are sending suggestions, promptings ; wires from men
and women about us, conveying subtle trains of thought and of
feeling. And the heart of man is the central office into which
these wires run, pouring in there this raw material of thought-
stuff.i

III.

The Keeper of the Heart.

1. The inherent weakness of all attempts at self-keeping is
that, keeper and kept being one and the same personality, the
more we need to be kept the less able we are to effect it. If in
the very garrison there are traitors, how shall the fortress be
defended ? In order, then, to exercise an effectual guard over our
characters and control over our natures, we must have an outward
• R. Mackenzie, The Loom of ProvidevM, 248.

PROVERBS IV. 23 249

standard of right and wrong which shall not be deflected by
variations in our temperature. We need a fixed light to steer
towards, which is stable on the stable shore, and is not tossing up
and down on our decks. We shall cleanse our way only when
we " take heed thereto, according to thy word." For even God's
viceroy within, the sovereign conscience, can be warped, per-
verted, silenced, and is not immune from the spreading infection
of evil. When it turns to God, as a mirror to the sun, it is
irradiated and flashes bright illumination into dark corners, but
its power depends on its being thus lit by radiations from the
very Light of Life. And if we are ever to have a coercive power
over the rebellious powers within, we must have God's power
breathed into us, giving grip and energy to all the good within,
quickening every lofty desire, satisfying every aspiration that
feels after Him, cowing all our evil and being the very self of
ourselves.

^ To know that God does not depend upon our feelings, but
our feelings upon God, to know that we must claim a certain
spiritual position as our right before we can realize it in our
apprehensions, to be assured that we have the Spirit of God
within us, and that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies,
affections, sympathies in our minds, the only source and inspirer
of them all, this is most necessary for us, the peculiar necessity,
if I am not mistaken, of this age. The confidence of a power
always at work within us, manifesting itself in our powerlessness,
a love filling up our lovelessness, a wisdom surmounting our folly,
the knowledge of our right to glory in this love, power, and
wisdom, the certainty that we can do all righteous acts by sub-
mitting to this Eighteous Being, and that we do them best when
we walk in a line chosen for us, and not of our choosing, this is
the strength surely, and nothing else, which carries us through
earth and lifts us to heaven.^

2. The heart will not be satisfied till it is given to the highest
and best. It demands a permanent investment for its affections •
wealth, earthly ambition, the happiness that comes from without
are only a loan at the best, and capital and interest will be
demanded at death. The heart demands something substantial •
glory, praise, reputation are full of promise till they are ours ; and
then, a last year's nest, out of which the bird has flown ! In one
* The Lift of Frederick Denison MaAtrice, i. 246.

250 THE HEART

word, the heart demands a person greater, nobler, purer, stronger
than itself, in whose affections and favour 'it can live and move
and have its being ; and God, as revealed in His Son Jesus Christ,
is the only One whose nature is great enough to environ the soul
with perfect peace and feed it with unfailing strength, in whose
favour is life, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore.

^ The wise Augustine, who, after many wild wanderings, in
which he had drained the fountain of knowledge, and quaffed to
the dregs the cup of earthly delights, and given himself to every
device by which the libertine and the fool endeavour to slake
their souls at the salt pools of death, came back to God, like a
bird to its forsaken nest, and said, " 0 Lord, broken is our heart
and unquiet, and full of sorrow it must be, till it finds rest in
Thee ! " ^

^ " I wish you would change my heart," said the chief Sekomi
to Livingstone, " Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud,
proud and angry, angry always." He would not hear of the New
Testament way of changing the heart; he wanted an outward,
mechanical way — and that way was not to be found.^

3. That Divine Power is exerted for our keeping on condition
of our trusting ourselves to Him and trusting Him for ourselves.
And that condition is no arbitrary one, but is prescribed by the
very nature of Divine help and of human faith. If God could
keep our souls without our trust in Him, He would. He does so
keep them as far as is possible, but for all the choicer blessings of
His giving, and especially for that of keeping us free from the
domination of our lower selves, there must be in us faith, if
there is to be in God help. The hand that lays hold on God in
Christ must be stretched out and must grasp His warm, gentle,
and strong hand, if the tingling touch of it is to infuse strength.
If the relieving force is victoriously to enter our hearts, we must
throw open the gates and welcome it. Faith is but the open door
for God's entrance. It has no efficacy in itself any more than a
door has, but all its blessedness depends on what it admits into
the hidden chambers of the heart.

^ " To conquer," said Napoleon, " you must replace." You
cannot expel bad thoughts by no thoughts. " Whatsoever things

* E. GriflBth-Jones, in Comradeship and Character, 261.
» Jl. F. Horton, The Book of Proverbs, 58.

PROVERBS IV. 23 251

are pure, think on these things." One thought there is which
above all others is fruitful and powerful, and which should be
familiar to every tempted Christian soul ; it is the thought of the
Cross and of Christ Crucified. "In hoc signo vinces." David
slew the Pliilistine with a sling and with a stone, but the sling
was ready in his hand, and foresight had caused him to fill the
bag with stones out of the brook. To the soul which fights the
faithful battle in the realm of thought, and cries aloud in the
darkness of its night to Christ Crucified, what wondrous light and
power are given by the merits of the Cross and Passion.

Here is the heart's true bulwark found 1

And here is rest secure;
And here is love's most certain ground,

And here salvation sure.^

^ 0 how well he is guarded and armed against the snares of
the devil and evil thoughts and impure imaginations, who has the
image of the Crucified fixed in his heart, penetrating all his
interior : and always and everywhere urging to the thought and
performance of every good ! Then inwardly consoled with
wondrous sweetness of heart from the presence of Christ shall
he be able justly to say, what holy David with great joy sang to
God: "I have run the way of thy commandments; when thou
didst enlarge my heart." ^

^ The Lenten Collects, 33.

* Thomas k Eempis, Sermons to the Novices Regular, 76.

Wronging the Soul.

feSS

Literature.

Black (H.), Edinburgh Sermons, 11.

Dewey (0.), Works, 15.

Finlayson (T. C), Hie Divine Gentleness, 291.

Harris (S. S.), The Dignity of Man, 108.

Holden (J. S.), Redeeming Vision, 144.

Matheson (G.), Messages of Hope, 81.

Mitchell (J,), Shot and Shell, 70.

Newton (J.), The Problem of Personality, 59.

Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, viii. 193.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xvi. (1878), No. 1060.

Christian World Pulpit, Ixi. 401 (W. L. Watkinson) ; Lxx. 379

(R. Mackintosh).
Eomiletic Review, xx. 426 (H. A. Stevenson).

•94

Wronging the Soul.

He that sinneth against me [misseth me — R.V. marg.] wrongeth his own

soul ;
All they that hate me love death.— Prov. viii. 36.

This is represented as the language of Wisdom. The attribute of
wisdom is personified throughout the chapter, which closes its
instructions with the declaration of the text : " He that sinneth
against me (or misseth me) wrongeth his own soul : all they that
hate me love death." The theme, then, is obviously the wrong
which the sinner does to himself, to his nature, to his own
soul.

He does a wrong, indeed, to others. He does them, it may be,
deep and heinous injury. The moral offender injures society, and
injures it in the most vital part. Sin is, to all the dearest interests
of society, a desolating power. It spreads misery through the
world. It brings that misery into the daily lot of millions. The
violence of anger, the exactions of selfishness, the corrodings of
envy, the coldness of distrust, the contests of pride, the excesses
of passion, the indulgences of sense, carry desolation into the very
bosom of domestic life ; and the crushed and bleeding hearts of
friends and kindred, or of a larger circle of the suffering and
oppressed, are everywhere witnesses to, and victims of, the
sinner's folly.

But all the injury, great and terrible as it is, which the sinner
does or can inflict upon others is not equal to the injury that he
inflicts upon himself. The evil that he does is, in almost all cases,
the greater, the nearer it comes to himself ; greater to his friends
than to society at large ; greater to his family than to his friends ;
and so it is greater to himself than to any other. Yes, it is in his
own nature, whose glorious traits are dimmed and almost blotted
out, whose pleading remonstrances are sternly disregarded, whose
immortal hopes are rudely stricken down, — it is in his own nature

256 WRONGING THE SOUL

that he does a work so dark and mournful, and so fearful, that he
ov^ht to shudder and weep to think of it.

I.

The Sin against Wisdom.

The Hebrew term rendered " he that sinneth against me,"
means literally, " he who misses me," who fails to " hit," to find
me and to hearken to me. The Greek word used in the Septuagint
has reference to an archer who misses his object, and of the arrow
that fails to hit the mark. In the text "missing" is a true
antithesis to finding. The Arabic reads it much in this sense:
" he who errs from me."

1. There are various definitions of sin, each one of which is
true according to our standpoint. If we regard sin as a violation
of man's true destiny, which we recognize not only in God's loving
command, but also in the very law of man's own being, then sin
is the transgressing of the law. If we regard sin as variation
from the right, the good, the true, then sin is unrighteousness.
If we regard sin as the negation of man's true nature as a spiritual
being, and the identifying of him with the things of sense, then
sin is materialism. If we regard sin as the fixing of the affections
— affections that were intended for glories beyond the stars — upon
the perishing things of this world, then sin is worldliness. And
finally, if we regard sin as the failure or refusal of the soul to
apprehend and confide in the unseen, then sin is unbelief. In the
sphere of law, then, sin is transgression ; in the sphere of morals,
it is unrighteousness ; in the sphere of thought, it is materialism ; in
the sphere of conduct, it is worldliness ; in the sphere of spiritual
apprehension, it is unbelief. But it is always one and the self-
same thing, the same grim and ghastly thing — in the godless man
of the world and in the ruffian who outrages law, in the smooth
libertine and in the vulgar thief, in the respectable atheist who says
there is no God, and in the brave outlaw who lives his creed and
acts upon his belief.

^ If all trees were clerks and all their branches pens, and all
the hills books, and all the waters ink, yet all would not

PROVERBS VIII. 36 257

sufficiently declare the evil that sin hath done. For sin has made
this house of heavenly light to be a den of darkness ; this house
of joy to be a house of mourning, lamentation, and woe ; this
house of all refreshment to be full of hunger and thirst ; this
abode of love to be a prison of enmity and ill-will ; this seat of
meekness to be the haunt of pride and rage and malice. For
laughter sin has brought horror; for munificence, beggary; and
for heaven, hell. Oh, thou miserable man, turn convert. For
the Father stretches out both His hands to thee. Do but turn
to Him and He will receive and embrace thee in His love.^

2. Sin is here represented as a missing of wisdom.

(1) Wisdom is frequently spoken of in the Book of Proverbs
as mere prudential morality, the discretion which life teaches or
should teach, the sagacity in dealing with affairs, the knowledge
of men and things that comes from experience. As many of the
Proverbs show, wisdom means what we call common sense, and
is opposed to folly, the stupid disregard of facts, the dulness of
mind that will not learn the lessons that are patent on the very
face of life. Thus, the book has many practical exhortations as
to what to do in the ordinary problems that emerge every day,
exhortations whose tone grows solemn and impressive as it warns
against gluttony and drunkenness and the undue regard of wealth
and kindred mistakes, even condescending to give advice about
becoming surety for another. It is a sort of prudential morality,
which experience loudly teaches to all who are not deaf.

To this wisdom, necessary though it is to all in some degree,
we could only partially apply the words of the text, "He that
misseth me wrongeth his own soul." We are all sufficiently
alive, at least in theory, to the necessity for such wisdom.
Men are trained in some fashion to acquire it ; and most of us do
gain some knowledge of men and affairs. We all undergo the
education which informs us of things, and fills our heads with
facts and distinctions in varying degrees of usefulness or useless-
ness. It is quite true that to miss this worldly wisdom which
life should teach is to wrong one's own self. To have the means
of knowledge in our hands and before our eyes and yet not to
know, to have gone through life with our minds sealed, is to do
despite to our own nature. To be incorrigible, unteachable, is to

* Jacob Behmen.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 7

258 WRONGING THE SOUL

be (as the proverbs again and again declare) brutish, like the fool
with folly so ingrained that though he were brayed in a mortar
with a pestle yet will not his folly depart from him. " He that
misseth me," says Wisdom as a guide of practical conduct,
" wrongeth his own self."

^ Prudence is a virtue of the practical reason, which not only
enables a man to know in concrete circumstances what means are
best to take to a good end, but also inclines a man to take those
means with promptitude. Prudence resides in the intellect, not
in the will, for its acts are intellectual acts. By prudence we
inquire about, examine, and direct ourselves to the adoption of
the proper means to a desired end. Modern philosophy has done
much to bring the virtue of prudence into contempt by represent-
ing it as exclusively a selfish virtue — a virtue by which each man
seeks to secure his own greatest happiness. But prudence no
more exclusively concerns the individual's happiness than do the
other virtues. For there is a prudence that prescribes the right
means to the family good or general good, as well' as that which
secures one's own personal good. However, when used without
qualification, the word "prudence" has always been understood
as appertaining to the individual good only.^

(2) But wisdom as used in this book has a deeper meaning,
which underlies all the practical counsels. Wisdom is looked on
as identical with the law of God. It is the discernment that
looks beneath the surface and sees cause and effect ; looks into
the heart of things and gets sane and true views of life, putting
everything into correct perspective — a guide of the heart as well
as of the feet, a guide for thought and feeling as well as for
conduct. In this deeper sense it teaches morals and religion.
Its very beginning is in the fear of God, reverence for the good
and the high. It deals with the moral basis of life, and looks
upon evil, not simply as mistake which a wise man would avoid,
but as sin which perverts and depraves the very nature. This
inner, deeper wisdom judges human nature and human conduct
by the religious ideal set forth in the law of God. It probes down
to the causes which produce such tragic failure in the lives of
men. It sees that life is built on law ; so that to break law is
not merely folly that incurs punishment from the outside as by
some machine that regulates all things, but is to break the law of
^ M. Crouin, The Science of Ethics.

PROVERBS VIII. 36 259

our own life and sin against our own nature and wrong our own
self.

This sense of the word as the law of God is that in which the
Psalmist prayed, "Teach us to number our days, that we may
apply our hearts unto wisdom," that we may learn not worldly
wisdom but wisdom^ the true meaning and purport and duty and
destiny of life. Wisdom like this delights in displaying the
fitness of what is good in the scheme of history and nature,
pointing to a moral design both in human society and in the
world at large.

^ At first sight, on a cursory reading of the early chapters
of this Book of Proverbs, it may seem as if all that was meant
by Wisdom was a shrewd earthly common sense and worldly prud-
ence. But look a little closer, and you will see that the Wisdom
spoken of in all these chapters is closely connected not only with
clearness of the well-furnished head, but with uprightness of the
heart. It is not an intellectual excellence only (though it is that)
which the author of the book commends ; it is a moral excellence
as well. The Wisdom that he speaks about is Wisdom that has
rectitude for an essential part of it, the fibre of its very being is
righteousness and holiness. Ay, there is no true wisdom which
does not rest calmly upon a basis of truthfulness of heart, and is
not guarded and nurtured by righteousness and purity of life.
Man is one — one and indissoluble. The intellect and the con-
science are but two names for diverse parts of the one human being,
or rather they are but two names for diverse workings of the one
immortal soul. And though it be possible that a man may be
enriched with all earthly knowledge, whilst his heart is the
dwelling-place of all corruption ; and that, on the other hand, a
man may be pure and upright in heart, whilst his head is very
poorly furnished and his understanding very weak — yet these
exceptional cases do not touch the great central truth, " The fear
of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom : and the knowledge of the
Holy One is understanding," Here, then, is the first outline of
this fair form that rises before you — a Wisdom satisfying and
entire for all the understanding, and not a dry, hard, abstract
Wisdom either, but one which is all glowing with light and
purity, and is guidance for the will, and cleansing for the con-
science, and strength for the practical life : wisdom which is
morality and righteousness ; morality and righteousness which is
the highest wisdom.^

^ A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester, i. 298.

26o WRONGING THE SOUL

(3) Wisdom is raised at length in this book to the highest
level when it is clothed with personal attributes and made almost
identical with God. As being the quality which God displays in
all His works, and being the root-principle of the world, it is
spoken of (in words that glow and catch fire) as a glorious person-
ality, the firstfruits of God's creative work, the very firstborn of
creation, not only presiding over the fortunes of men and dis-
posing of human destiny, but aiding God in creation, the Divine
Wisdom set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the
earth was. It is in this sense, as Wisdom personified, that the
word is used in this chapter, which one who speaks with authority
calls one of the most remarkable and beautiful things in Hebrew
literature. We can understand how the Fathers of the Christian
Church used this passage to illustrate their thought about Christ,
the Logos, the Word of God, the incarnate wisdom and love and
righteousness of God, the image of the invisible God, the first-
born of every creature, who is before all things and by whom all
things consist ; and we can see how they should apply to Christ
the beautiful words of this passage, " I love them that love me ;
and those that seek me early shall find me. Whoso findeth me
findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord." ^

Nay, falter not; 'tis your assured good
To seek the noblest; 'tis your only good,
Now you have seen it ; for that higher vision
Poisons all meaner choice for evermore.

IL

The Eeaction of Sin in the Soul.

" He that misseth me wrongeth his own souL" He that does
not take Me into account, ignores Me, leaves Me out of his
practical creed and obedience, has done an immense injustice to
himself. He that misses Me has missed the mark, missed the
prize of existence.

To miss the wisdom that cometh from above, to fail to recog-
nize the true relationship between life and the universal law of
God, is indeed to wrong ourselves. It is to belittle man and do

* T. C. Finlayson, The Divine Gentleness, 304.

PROVERBS vm. 36 261

dishonour to human nature. To believe it in any sense true of
wisdom that

She doth preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens by her are fresh and strong,

and to deny that that same law has meaning and purpose in human
life, is to make the whole universe a hideous dance of unreason.

And if without this faith there seems no foothold for intellect,
still less is there for morals. To be men in all that hitherto has
stood for manhood at its best, we must believe that our moral life
is related to a moral law which is rooted in the very nature of
things; we must believe that man is so related to God that
the will of God, the law of God, is the law of our own life, and
that to miss this, to sin against this, is to destroy ourselves.
This is why, according to the Bible, sin is among other things
foolishness, insensate folly, a mad choice of death. To break
the commandments is not merely to break a system of rules
arbitrarily imposed on us from without, but is to sin against
ourselves, and to ruin our own true happiness, to dim the radiance
of our own souls, and to desecrate our own life.

^ Ruskin was never weary of telling that, whatever faults an
artist may have, they are always reproduced in his work. He
declares that the fumes of wine and the stain of sensuality
mentally leave dark shadows upon the artist's masterpiece. He
cannot indulge his lower nature without in some degree clouding
and marring his genius. But if everybody can see that in a man's
physique and in a man's genius, is it not just as certain that sin
will spoil a man's lordlier self, his moral and spiritual being ? A
man can never commit a transgression but it has blinded the eyes
of his spiritual understanding. A man never violates a command-
ment of God but he has done an injustice to his conscience.^

1. Sin introduces an element of disorder, of discord, and of
disease into our life. It is a violation of our nature, a refusal to
follow the light and to obey the highest. It destroys the inner
harmony. It throws us out of accord with the central music of
the universe. We pray, " Thy will be done on earth, as it is in
heaven." Heaven is heaven because that highest will is done
there. Heaven is begun below when the will of God is done.

1 W. L. Watkinson.

262 WRONGING THE SOUL

The religion of Jesus Christ holds as its chief power the secret of
making duty a delight. Man finds his highest and noblest sphere
of activity in doing the will of God ; and love for that will trans-
forms the man, gives all his powers their proper outlet, and makes
for their perfection. To stand outside that central will is to
wrong our souls and to mar our lives. Christ is seeking to gather
all into Himself, and to stand outside that Divine unity is to
stultify ourselves and thwart God. To dash into the rapids above
the falls is to court inevitable destruction, and to throw ourselves
athwart the known will of God is self-murder.

^ Even our narrow experience of the universe presented one
obtrusive fact which seemed to contradict the theistic presup-
position of Omnipotent Goodness. The contingently presented
universe of experience, which philosophy tries to reduce to
rational unity, consists of unconscious things and self-conscious
persons. Things are believed to evolve in natural order, which is
thus virtually divine language ; and this divine language of things
is (so far) scientifically interpretable by persons. But persons them-
selves— at least on this planet — seem to be naturally evolved in
moral disorder, and to live in a chaos of suffering. Pain, the
supposed consequence of moral disorder, seems to be unfairly dis-
tributed. The constant order of insentient things is in striking
contrast to the moral disorder that appears among living persons.
What ought not to be, is commonly found in them. Analogous
irregularity is not seen among things ; which are all found punctu-
ally obeying their natural, yet supernatural, laws — and they are
not expected to involve us at last in intellectual disorder. The
material world of things does not put us to final confusion, although
most of its phenomena remain uninterpreted, or inadequately inter-
preted. But the world of persons seems to be continually putting
us to moral confusion, by its strangely chaotic appearances.^

2. Sin impairs the moral sense, and relaxes the spiritual fibre,
taking away with it the bloom of the soul. All observation and
all experience prove that this is its immediate, unvarying, inevit-
able effect. He who once yields to do wrong will find it harder
the next time to do right, until he speedily becomes powerless to
choose good and resist evil. The moral sense, which at first is
quick to discriminate, begins under the pressure of sin, to lose the
keenness of perception. The high sense of honour and of truthful-

^ A. Campbell Fraser, Biographia Philosophica, 306,

PROVERBS VIII. 2>^ 26

o

ness is dulled. The good seems to be less good, and the evil
does not seem to be so very evil, until at last that soul calls evil
good and good evil. Such a desperate degradation is not reached
all at once, — not till years of sin, it may be, and of indulgence have
passed by. But let the soul remember that the first sin is the
first step, and that the next will be easier, and that with each
succeeding sin the momentum increases at a fearful rate until its
speed shall hurl it down to ruin.

^ It is related that in certain parts in South America it used
to be the practice to drug with opium the coolies brought to work
there, in order to make them oblivious to their wretched surround-
ings, and their arduous tasks. It is possible with the opiates of
sin, of small sins as we call them if you will, gradually to dose our
souls into a state of callous indifference to great moral and
spiritual issues, so that it becomes possible to stand upon the
very brink of ruin and not to realize it. What once would have
appalled and shocked with a great horror is looked upon with
indifference, or perhaps practised with complacency.^

^ Meissonier, the great artist, had a very delicate hand, and he
used to take great care of it, so much so that he had it shampooed
every morning, and in driving always wore thick gloves. He was
always watchful that he should not impair this marvellous
suppleness and dexterity. Well, if a man thinks it necessary to
take all that care of his hand that it may retain its sensitiveness
and masterliness, how careful you ought to be of that diviner
faculty inside by which you discriminate in the great questions of
character and conduct. In short, no man commits a sin but the
conscience that records it is injured, it has lost some of its
discriminateness, some of its sensibility, some of its force. A man
never sins but he has injured his will.^

3. To turn our back on wisdom is to love death. Sin is not
only foolishness : it is suicide, self-inflicted wrong, killing the man
in us, pouring out the very blood of our life. To have lived and
with all our getting to have missed wisdom, to have missed the
blessedness of accord with God's holy law, is failure. And in all
the world's sore tragedy there is no failure so tragic as this. As
the years pass by us, and the shadows gather round us, we look
back, and the keenest sting is the thought of what we have missed
by the way, what we might have been and done and received, and
1 R. Mackintosh. a W. L. Watkinson.

2^4 WRONGING THE SOUL

failed to be or do or get. Wheu we have given way to passion
or evil desire, when we have sinned against conscience or heart,
when we have slid down to lower levels of thought and life, how
we have wronged ourselves ! No enemy hath done this, but we
ourselves. Fools ! we have been our own worst enemy. " So
foolish was I, I was as a beast before thee." Folly ! It is
madness. " He that misseth me " (wisdom, the eternal law of
all living) "wrongeth his own soul. All that hate me love
death."

^ Charlotte Bronte writes thus to her literary friend and
adviser Mr. W. S. Williams, a few days after the death of her
brother Branwell, who passed away at the gloomy Haworth
Parsonage, in September, 1848, a dissolute wreck — the victim, at
the age of 31, of opium, strong drink, and debauchery : " ' We
have buried our dead out of our sight.' A lull begins to succeed
the gloomy tumult of last week. It is not permitted us to grieve
for him who is gone as others grieve for those they lose. The
removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us
rather in the light of a mercy than a chastisement. Branwell
was his father's and his sisters' pride and hope in boyhood, but
since manhood the case has been otherwise. It has been our lot
to see him take a wrong bent ; to hope, expect, wait his return to
the right path ; to know the sickness of hope deferred, the dismay
of prayer baffled ; to experience despair at last and now to behold
the sudden early obscure close of what might have been a noble
career. I do not weep from a sense of bereavement — there is no
prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion
lost — but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the
untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning
and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had
aspirations and ambitions for him once, long ago — they have
perished mournfully. Nothing remains of him but a memory of
errors and sufferings. There is such a bitterness of pity for his
life and death, such a yearning for the emptiness of his whole
existence as I cannot describe." ^

^ Professor Turner tells us in his most interesting book on
astronomy that the astronomer uses mechanism of unspeakable
delicacy. One day they allowed a visitor to come into the room ;
and the visitor gently touched one of the instruments with his
finger. That was enough. It took months of painstaking and
expensive work to correct that machine and make it once more

' C. K. Shorter, The BroiUia ■ Life and Letters, i. 4£ia

PROVERBS viiL 36 565

register the signs of the sky. And I tell you that as one touch
would destroy that astronomical mechanism, so an act, a thought,
a word, a fancy may destroy the delicacy of the human soul, and
put us out of fellowship with the sky above our head. He that
sinneth against Me does injustice to his own personality, maims
his own splendid faculties. That is the thing to look at — suicide,
self-destruction, suicide of the soul.^

4. This would seem to be the worst degradation of all — that
man should not only sin his intellect and will and conscience
away, but that he should love his shame, that his soul should be
enamoured of its degradation. And yet, who does not know that
even this is the effect of sin ? Through it men learn to love the
base things of this world, and lose the power to love the nobler
things. What is life to such a soul but shame? What shall
death be but the beginning of an eternal bereavement ? All its
affections are fixed on things of sense. All its delights and all its
joys are bound up with the pleasures of sense. And when death
comes and strips off the pampered flesh, and the world, which
alone it is able to love, fades away like the baseless fabric of a
vision, what shall eternity be to that soul but an eternal bereave-
ment of all that it is able to love, and therefore an eternal torture
and an eternal death ?

^ A Buddhist story tells of a man who had lived wickedly
and became very ill and nigh unto death. In the fever he had a
dream, and in this dream he was conducted through the under-
world to the hall of justice in which the judges sat in curtained
alcoves. He came opposite his judge, and was told to write his
misdeeds upon a slate provided for that purpose. Sentence was
then passed that he should be thrice struck by lightning for his
sins. The curtain was then drawn back, and he faced his judge,
to find there seated the very image of himself, and he realized
that he had pronounced the verdict. He had unconsciously
judged himself. There is a word that says, "Be sure your sin
will find you out," which some seem to think means " Be sure
your sin will be found out." This of course is quite beside the
mark. It points to a man's sin avenging itself, tracking down its
victim and demanding its pound of flesh. So " Be sure your sin
will find you out," with emphasis upon the you. "He that
sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul." There is no escape
from it.2

' W. L. Watkinson. » R. Mackintosh.

266 WRONGING THE SOUL

Though no mortal e'er accused you,
Though no witness e'er confused you,
Though the darkness came and fell
Over even deeds of hell;

Though no sign nor any token
Spake of one commandment broken,
Though the world should praise and bless
And love add the fond caress.

Still your secret sin would find you,
Pass before your eyes to blind you,
Burn your heart with hidden shame,
Scar your cheek with guilty flame.

Sin was never sinned in vain,
It could always count its slain;
You yourself must witness be
To your own soul's treachery.

The Winning of Souls.

a67

Literature.

Brandt (J. L.), Soul Saving, 7.
Campbell (A.), in The World's Great Sermons, iv. 81.
Norton (J. N.), Every Sunday, 418.
Oosterzee (J. J. van), The Year of Salvation, ii. 178.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 9.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xv. (1869), No. 860 ;
xxii. (1876), No. 1292.

„ „ The Soul- Winner, 219.

Stuart (J. Q.), Talks about Soul- Winning, 7.
Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 231.
British Friend, xix. (1910) 3 (E. M. Westlake).
Christian World Pulpit, ii. 289 (E, Medley) ; xv. 334 (J. Morgan).
Churchman's Pulpit : Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, iv. 216 (J. E. Vaux),

218 (S. A. Northrop).
Free Church Year Book, 1902, p. 29 (A. C. Dixon).
Homiletic Review, Ii. 453 (R. A. Torrey).

•68

The Winning of Souls.

He that is wise winneth souls. — Prov. xi. 30.

1. There is a striking difiference between the translation as given
above from the Eevised Version and that with which we are more
familiar in the Authorized Versioa The clause ran formerly,
"He that winneth souls is wise." Thus rendered its meaning was
not very clear, and was rather suggestive of credit laid to a man's
account for winning souls. But the transposing of the sentence
in the Eevised Version gives a much more illuminating thought,
at the same time carrying out the idea contained in the preceding
clause of the verse. " He that is wise winneth souls." Does not
this imply that the man who is walking in the true wisdom shall
win souls, not by specific effort directed to that end or from thought
of credit or reward, but as a consequence, a natural result, of the
influence of his character and life ? We are reminded of our
Lord's picture-lesson of a lamp placed on the stand which " shineth
unto all that are in the house." " Even so," He says, " let your
light shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify your Father which is in heaven."

2. In the New Testament we find the Apostle James, with

whom religion is nothing if not practical, beautifully describing

the true wisdom. " Who is wise and understanding among you ?

let him show by his good life his works in meekness of wisdom."

Here again the Eevised Version is more telling in its simple

directness, and the whole passage strikingly bears out the thought

under consideration. The Apostle goes on to say that if there are

bitter feelings and jealousy in the heart this wisdom is 710^ a

wisdom that comes from above, but is earthly and animal. " But

the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle,

easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without

variance, without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is

969

270 THE WINNING OF SOULS

sown in peace by them that make peace " (Jas. iii. 13-18). Here
we are brought back to our starting-point in Proverbs, " the fruit
of the righteous ! " The " good life," the daily walk in meekness
of wisdom — it is this that is full of good fruit and becomes a tru
of life. The fruit scattered brings forth fruit in other lives, and
souls are attracted by its beauty. A tree of life must impart
nourishment and health and joy to all who come into contact with
it. In the Apocalypse we read of the tree of life whose " leaves
were for the healing of the nations " (Eev. xxii. 2). If our lives
were thus fragrant, shedding peace and love around, should we not
prove in our experience the truth of the saying, " He that is wise
winneth souls " ?

I.

The Value of the Soul.

1. The value of a thing depends upon its intrinsic worth :
upon what it costs of time, labour, sacrifice, and means to secure
it. For gold man leaves home, loved ones, and native land, sails
over seas, crosses continents, overleaps yawning chasms, climbs
dizzy mountains, digs and delves in storm, heat, and cold, faces
perils, famine, and sword to reach the El Dorado of his fond hopes.
For the precious diamond he passes through the same rough
experience, satisfied only when he snatches from the depths of a
Golconda the Koh-i-noor which in time flashes from the jewelled
hand of a princess, or the golden crown of a king. But gold
and diamonds and political preferment and professional glory are
not all there is in this world : they are only the things of a day
that perish with the using. Put all material things, known
and unknown, in the one scale, and the immortal soul of man
in the other, and what is the result ? The spiritual outweighs
the material !

^ During the World's Fair in Chicago there was one place in
the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building — in the Tiffany
exhibit — that one could never approach, day or night, when the
building was open because of the great crowd gathered around it.
I was there time and time and time again, but never could I get
at the place ; I always had to stand on tiptoe and look over the

PROVERBS XI. 30 271

heads of the crowd. What were they looking at ? Nothing but
a cone of purple velvet revolving upon an axis, and toward the
apex of the cone a large, beautiful diamond of almost priceless
worth. It was well worth looking at. But I have never recalled
that scene but the thought has come to me that the single soul
of the raggedest pauper on the streets, of the most degraded
woman, of the most ignorant boy or girl on the street is of
infinitely more value in God's sight than ten thousand gems
like that.^

2. But there is another and truer method by which to
determine the soul's value — God's estimate. The real worth of
anything depends on what the one knowing its value is willing to
pay for it. He who created the soul knew its worth, and so in
exchange gave His only begotten Son. The redemptive price
paid, " not with corruptible things as silver and gold," was " the
precious blood of Christ," the highest gift and the brightest glory
that Heaven could afford. To win souls, then, should be the
animating principle underlying the work of the Christian in
pulpit or pew. Soul- winning should be the ruling passion of our
lives, and the highest ideal of the most ambitious religious zealot.
Indeed, it is the sum total of all wisdom. "He that is wise
winneth souls."

^ Some years ago in Salt Eapids, Minnesota, two farmer
brothers were digging a well. The one was down in the well
with a bucket, and the other at the top with the windlass. The
man who was digging down in the well struck a quicksand, and
the sand commenced to pour into it. Fortunately there was a
good broad plank down in the well, and the man at the bottom
got underneath that plank, but the sand silted in from every side.
His brother at the top could hear his voice, and knew that he was
living. He sent word out for help, and from all over the township
the townspeople gathered at the mouth of the well to try and dic^
the man out. They dug on throughout the day, and at night
torches were brought, and in relays through the long night all the
men in the township worked on and on, digging out the sand as it
kept pouring in, and before dawn they succeeded in getting the
man out. I afterwards saw him alive and well. A whole town-
ship working all night to dig out one man, to save one life ! Was
it worth while ? I say it was. And Christ dug very deep to
save our souls.^

1 R. A. Torrey, » Hid.

272 THE WINNING OF SOULS

II.

The Way to Win Souls.

1. What is meant by winning souls ? To the writer of the
text, we may be quite sure, the soul meant nothing less than the
entire individuality, with all its faculties, and whoever would win
souls, as he understood the term, would have to address himself
to the whole man or woman, not to some rarefied, ethereal,
intangible part of their being. To win a human being is, we
may take it, tantamount to winning him over to some point of
view, to a certain resolution, to make him take his stand on a
certain side. Now, we all know what is meant by a winning
manner — how often we have envied the fortunate individuals who
seemed naturally endowed with that gift, who could state their
case and advance their claims in a way it was difficult to resist,
who could make you do things without hurting your feelings,
convincing you somehow that those were the right things to do,
though you had not thought so previously ! Some one else may
urge just the same course of action on you, but his manner, his
very tone, has an aggressive quality which rasps you, ruffles you,
rouses your opposition, and he fails to carry you with him,
however cogent his arguments may be. Now souls — men and
women — have to be won, not hustled, not coerced, not threatened.
The appeal even of religion, however majestic, must respect man's
reason, and not seek to carry the inviolable sanctuary of the soul
by force ; no one has ever yet been driven into heaven as into
a sort of concentration camp, at the point of the bayonet or the
crack of the whip, and He who understood the human soul els no
one else has ever done used the note of appeal rather than of
command or menace. Soul-winning — the influencing of men and
women for the better — which is not first and last persuasive is
a contradiction in terms.

(1) The word " win " is used in warfare. Warriors win cities
and provinces. Now, to win a soul is a much more difficult thing
than to win a city. Observe the earnest soul- winner at his work ;
how cautiously he seeks his great Captain's directions to know
when to hang out the white flag to invite the heart to surrender
to the sweet love of a dying Saviour ; when, at the proper time,

PROVERBS XL 30 273

to hang out the black flag of threatening, showing that, if grace
be not received, judgment will surely follow ; and when to unfurl,
with dread reluctance, the red flag of the terrors of God against
stubborn, impenitent souls. The soul- winner has to sit down
before a soul as a great captain before a walled town ; to draw his
lines of circumvallation, to cast up his entrenchments, and to fix his
batteries. He must not advance too fast, or he may overdo the
fighting ; he must not move too slowly, or he may not seem to be
in earnest, and may thus do mischief. Then he must know which
gate to attack, how to plant his guns at Ear-gate, and how to
discharge them ; how, sometimes, to keep the batteries going, day
and night, with red-hot shot, if perhaps he may make a breach in
the walls ; at other times, to lie by and cease firing, and then, on
a sudden, to open all the batteries with terrific violence, if per-
adventure he may take the soul by surprise, or cast in a truth
when it was not expected, to burst like a shell in the soul, and do
damage to the dominions of sin.

^ The Christian soldier must know how to advance by little
and little — to sap that prejudice, to undermine that old enmity, to
blow into the air that lust, and at the last, to storm the citadel.
It is his to throw the scaling ladder up, and to have his ears
gladdened as he hears a clicking on the wall of the heart, telling
that the scaling ladder has grasped and has gained firm hold ;
and then, with his sabre between his teeth, to climb up, spring on
the man, slay his unbelief in the name of God, capture the city,
run up the blood-red flag of the cross of Christ, and say, " The
heart is won, won for Christ at last." This needs a warrior well-
trained, a master in his art. After many days' attack, many
weeks of waiting, many an hour of storming by prayer and batter-
ing by entreaty, to carry the Malakoff of depravity, — this is the
work, this is the difficulty. It takes no fool to do this. God's
grace must make a man wise thus to capture Mansoul, to lead its
captivity captive, and open wide the heart's gates that the Prince
Immanuel may come in. This is winning a soul.^

(2) We use the word in love-making. We speak of the bride-
groom who wins his bride. There are secret and mysterious ways
by which those who love win the object of their affection, which
are wise in their fitness to the purpose. The weapon of this
warfare is not always the same, yet where that victory is won the

1 C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul- Winntr, 254.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 1 8

274 THE WINNING OF SOULS

wisdom of the means becomes clear to every eye. The weapon of
love is sometimes a look, or a soft word whispered and eagerly
listened to ; sometimes it is a tear ; but this I know, that we
have, most of us in our turn, cast around another heart a chain
which that other would not care to break, and which has linked
us twain in a blessed captivity which has cheered our life. Yes,
and that is very nearly the way in which we have to save
souls. That illustration is nearer the mark than any of the
others. Love is the true way of soul-winning, for when we
speak of storming the walls, and when we speak of wrestling,
those are but metaphors, but this is near the fact. We win
by love.

^ I believe that much of the secret of soul-winning lies in
having bowels of compassion, in having spirits that can be touched
with the feeling of human infirmities. Carve a preacher out of
granite, and even if you give him an angel's tongue, he will convert
nobody. Put him into the most fashionable pulpit, make his
elocution faultless, and his matter profoundly orthodox, but, so
long as he bears within his bosom a hard heart, he can never win
a soul. Soul-saving requires a heart that beats hard against the
ribs. It requires a soul full of the milk of human kindness ; this
is the sine qua non of success.^

2. What is this wisdom that wins souls ? It is the wisdom
not of the schools, but of the heart. It comes from experience
and sympathetic insight. The Hebrew word for winneth " may
also be rendered " taketh " and with this we may compare Christ's
promise to His disciples that they should " catch men " (Luke
v. 10). This suggests the art of fishing or bird-catching. We
must have our lures for souls, adapted to attract, to fascinate, to
grasp. We must go forth with our bird-lime, our decoys, our nets,
our baits, so that we may but catch the souls of men. Their
enemy is a fowler possessed of the basest and most astounding
cunning ; we must outwit him with the guile of honesty, the craft
of grace. But the art is to be learned only by Divine teaching,
and herein we must be wise and willing to learn.

^ Washington Irving tells us of some three gentlemen who had
read in Izaak Walton all about the delights of fishing. So they
must needs enter upon the same aniuseniont, and accordingly they

1 C. H. Spurgeon, The Soul- TVinTur, 256.

PROVERBS XI. 30 275

became disciples of the gentle art. They went into New York,
and bought the best rods and lines that could be purchased, and
they found out the exact fly for the particular day or m'onth, so
that the fish might bite at once, and as it were fly into the basket
with alacrity. They fished, and fished, and fished the livelong
day; but the basket was empty. They were getting disgusted
with a sport that had no sport in it, when a ragged boy came down
from the hills, without shoes or stockings, and humiliated them to
the last degree. He had a bit of a bough pulled off a tree, and a
piece of string, and a bent pin ; he put a worm on it, threw it in,
and out came a fish directly, as if it were a needle drawn to a
magnet. In again went the line, and out came another fish, and
so on, till his basket was quite full. They asked him how he did
it. Ah ! he said, he could not tell them that, but it was easy
enough when you had the way of it.^

^ " I used to judge the worth of a person," writes George
Gissing, " by his intellectual power and attainment. I could see
no good where there was no logic, no charm where there was no
learning. Now I think that one has to distinguish between two
forms of intelligence, that of the brain and that of the heart, and
I have come to regard the second as by far the more important."
Indeed, I must give my heart to the sinfullest soul, the most
pithless and the most provoking, if I am to entice it home to God.
I must love it, as God has loved me, out and up from the pit of
its corruption.2

(1) We must be wise first of all, in the grand old Scripture
sense of the word ; we are to be good. The successful winner of
souls must himself have found the truth. This is what the first
clause of the verse asserts. " The fruit of the righteous is a tree
of life." The fruit of the righteous — that is to say, his life — is not
a thing fastened upon him, but it grows out of him. It is not a
garment which he puts ofi" and on, but is inseparable from him-
self. The sincere man's religion is the man himself, not a cloak
for his concealment. True godliness is the natural outgrowth of a
renewed nature, not the forced growth of pious hothouse excite-
ment. Is it not natural for a vine to bear clusters of grapes ?
natural for a palm tree to bear dates ? Certainly as natural as it
is for the apples of Sodom to be found on the trees of Sodom, and
for noxious plants to produce poisonous berries. When God gives
a new nature to His people, the life which comes out of that new

* C. H. Spurgeon. ^ A. Smellie, In the Secret Place, 9.

276 THE WINNING OF SOULS

nature springs spontaneously from it. And that which to the
believer himself is fruit becomes to others a tree. From the child
of God there falls the fruit of holy living, even as an acorn drops
from the oak ; this holy living becomes influential and produces
the best results in others, even as the acorn becomes itself an oak,
and lends its shade to the birds of the air. The Christian's holi-
ness becomes a tree of life. It yields shade and sustenance to all
around.

^ I remember in the Rijks-Museum at Amsterdam seeing a
picture, " The Soul -Fishers " — a very crude and naive affair, boats
manned by monks tossing on the billows, and the monks, equipped
with fishing-rods, hauling out as many as they could of the in-
numerable souls perishing in the waters. That is an extremely
crude pictorial rendering of a truth which concerns us all — not
merely one class or profession. We can all win souls, touch lives
to finer issues, and that by nothing more miraculous than by our
own daily walk. The one transforming uplifting force whose
attraction never fails to tell is personal goodness, doing its work
without advertisement, diffusing its fragrance without an eye to
effect or consciousness of an audience ; the one contagion that
cannot be stamped out is what has been called the contagion of
character.^

(2) We must be wise in the knowledge of the human heart.
In their inmost nature the heart of a child and the heart of a man
are much alike ; you may study one in the other, and to know one
is to know the other. And here we are speaking not of that know-
ledge which can be had only by great labour and research, but
of that which any one may gain who, with a prayerful, sympathiz-
ing nature, goes out into the world, and keeps his eyes open. We
have no need to purchase costly volumes in order to possess this
wisdom, the books we are to read lie all about us ; and within
ourselves we carry what ought to be to us an open volume — our
own hearts. No doubt it needs patience and practice to be able
to speak a word in season ; here, as elsewhere, we must learn to
do well ; but then how precious is the result, upon what a vantage
ground we are put for casting our net to purpose ! The teacher
who knows how his children live, who has taken the measure of
their several characters, can give to each his portion of meat in
due season as none other can ; he has an incalculable advantage

* J. Warschauer, The }Vay of Understanding, 236.

PROVERBS XL 30 277

over the preacher, in that he can deal in personal applications ; he
need not draw his bow at a venture, for he can urge his point of
rebuke or entreaty right home.

3. The wise man will have a passion for souls. He knows that
he must take men one by one. The gospel plan is that people are
to be saved, not in masses, but individually. Telling of Jesus
before crowded audiences may be inspiring to a speaker, but it is
face to face, hand to hand, work that reaches the heart. Christi-
anity always has grown and always will grow on this line of personal
finding. A wins B, B wins C, and C wins D ; thus " the Lord
added to the church daily such as should be saved." The feet of
every one of us who love the Lord Jesus were turned to the Cross
through the influence of some one person — some neighbour, friend,
mother, teacher, or pastor. In the first chapter of the Gospel of
John how strikingly is this point demonstrated ! There stands
that rugged, kindly faced wilderness preacher with two of his
disciples. He humbly introduces to them the Lamb of God ; then
Andrew " findeth " the Messiah ; then he first " findeth " his
brother Simon : Jesus then " findeth " Philip, and Philip " findeth "
Nathanael. The wise man who is to win souls one by one must
have a passion for soul-winning.

^ The true soul-winner must be an enthusiast. This is not a
task which the perfunctory and the lethargic can perform. Those
are not victories achieved by the man who is prompted only by
a cold sense of duty. On the altar of the heart the fires must
blaze at white heat. " With a rush the intolerable craving must
shiver throughout me like a trumpet-call." The thought of the
depths to which souls may fall and of the heights to which they
may rise, the conviction of the responsibility laid on me to benefit
them, the summons of One who deserves a thousand times more
than I can repay Him — these motives are to give hands and feet
and wings to my endeavour. I cannot gain recruits for science,
unless its fairy tales have enchanted my own mind ; or for history,
unless I have followed its turnings and windings through the
centuries ; or for poetry, unless I am fascinated by its melody and
music; and it is useless trying to gain recruits for Christ, till
Christ is personally my Chiefest and my Best. My sin, my death,
my hopelessness, His forgiveness, His redemption, His glory : the
vital meaning of these the Gospel and the Holy Ghost must teach

278 THE WINNING OF SOULS

to myself. There can be no true soul-winner who is not a pupil
at the feet of Jesus.^

4. The successful winner of souls must rely less on his own
wisdom and more on the wisdom of God. One of the principal
qualifications of a great artist's brush must be its yielding itself
up to him so that he can do what he likes with it. A harpist
will love to play on one particular harp because he knows the
instrument, and the instrument almost appears to know him. So,
when God puts His hand upon the very strings of our being, and
every power within us seems to respond to the movements of His
hand, we are instruments that He can use. It is not easy to keep
in that condition, to be in such a sensitive state that we receive
the impression that the Holy Spirit desires to convey, and are
influenced by Him at once.

^ If there is a great ship out at sea, and there comes a tiny
ripple on the waters, it is not moved by it in the least. Here
comes a moderate wave, the vessel does not feel it. But look over
the bulwarks ; see those corks down there, if only a fly drops into
the water, they feel the motion, and dance upon the tiny wave.
May you be as mobile beneath the power of God as the cork is on
the surface of the sea ! For this self-surrender is one of the
essential qualifications for one who is to be a winner of souls.^

My soul. is drawn out to the hungry soul,
But what have I to give, of wine or bread,
Who hunger, thirst, myself, and scarce am fed.

So small my portion, and so scant my dole ?

Is it enough that I should hold my cup
To starving lips, and, with a touch divine,
Wilt Thou transmute its water into wine,

To heavenly food the crumbs I offer up?

Oh Thou, compassionate, who on the rood

Thyself, our mystic Bread and Wine didst spend,
I and my brother low before Thee bend.

Fill Thou his soul — my hungry soul — with good.'

* A. Smellie, In the Secret Place, 9.

' G. H. Spurgeon, The SotU- fVinner, 66.

* M. Blaikie, Songs by the Way, 47,

The Sovereignty of Providence.

*f9

Literature.

Jerdan (C), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 107.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Esther, etc., 204.

Shepherd (A.), Men in the Making, 57.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Morning by Morning, 354.

Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 141.

Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 320.

Christian World Pulpit, Ixiv. 138 (T. Templeton) ; Ixix. 249 (A.

Shepherd).
Church of England Magazine, Ixviii. 56 (C. Jenkyns).

a9o

The Sovereignty of Providence.

The lot is cast into the lap ;

But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.— Prov. xvi. 33.

Sometimes lots are cast to refer the decision of a matter to
what we call chance. When Jesus was crucified, the soldiers who
were left on the ground to guard the cross divided His garments
among themselves ; and they seem actually to have gambled for
His coat while He was hanging above them on the cross, dying
for the sin of the world. They decided by a cast of the dice-box
whose property it should become.

Devout men in ancient times also used the lot on occasions
of special importance ; but they did so in the fear of God, and as
an act of worship. The practice was an appeal to the Divine
judgment. The cast of the lot showed the Divine will. Thus on
the great Day of Atonement in Israel the choice of the scapegoat
was made by lot. The Twelve Tribes had their territories in the
land of Canaan apportioned by lot. Saul was chosen by this
method to be the first king of Israel. In this way Jonah was
found out to be the cause of the storm upon the Great Sea.
Matthias was selected by lot to fill the vacancy in the company of
the Twelve Apostles. These are a few examples from the Bible
of the solemn use of the lot on important occasions.

^ In casting lots the Jews probably used stones which differed
from one another in shape or colour. These were thrown together
into the " lap," or loose fold, of a man's garment ; and then they
were shaken about so that there should be a perfect mixing of
them, to prevent all preference of one stone over another on the
part of the person who was to draw the lot.^

There are two thoughts in this old Hebrew proverb :

I. The Incalculableness of Life.
II. The Eeliable Providence of God.

* C. Jerdan,

282 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE

I.

The Lot.

" The lot is cast into the lap."

1. The drawing or casting of lots looks like an appeal to
chance, for the result of the operation seems to depend upon
chance. And our life in the world, to the outward view, often
appears as if it were a lottery. People speak of being fortunate
or unfortunate, lucky or unlucky. One says, "I had the good
fortune to find him at home." Another says, " As ill luck would
have it, he was not at home." The Koman general called to the
pilot in the storm, " Fear not, you carry Caesar and his fortune."
Among the Eomans, Fortuna was the goddess of luck, fate, or
fortune. It used to be said of Oliver Cromwell -that he had his
lucky days. And how few are there who do not recognize chances
in life, events of great moment which seem to come upon them
quite fortuitously ?

^ Have you ever, in a collected hour, and aided by a good
memory, gone over the events of your own life — gone over them
in some little detail ? To many people there comes at some time
either a period of enforced inactivity, or some critical juncture,
which makes their thoughts range over the past, turning its
yellowed leaves, stopping a little here and sighing a little there,
with now a half-sad smile and now a sharp twinge of regret, and
once or twice the recollection of a great joy which even yet sheds
its radiance over the page. If you have ever indulged in such a
survey, you must have been struck with one thing — the unex-
pectedness, the incalculableness of life, the utterly unforeseen and
seemingly trifling circumstances that proved to be decisive, as a
drop of water falling this side or that of the Great Divide will be
carried to the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.

Take, for instance, Luther and Loyola. What turned the
former to a religious career — what caused him to enter the
monastery from which he emerged to challenge the Pope — was a
narrow escape from being struck by lightning ; while what made
Loyola from a soldier and courtier into tlie founder of the Jesuit
order was tlie cannon ball which laid him low as he stood on the
walls of Pampeluna. Men of iron will and mighty genius they
both were, but the occasion, the impulse, which brought out their

PROVERBS XVI. 33 283

genius and gave direction to their will, they neither created, nor
foresaw, nor resisted. Think as highly as we will of our own
initiative, of our power to deal with the materials life supplies us
withal, the extent to which unforeseen circumstances have shaped
our course must touch the most confident at times with a strange
humility, and make him echo the old words, " It is not in man
that walketh to direct his steps." *

2. It cannot be denied that advantage or disadvantage often
comes to a man, irrespective of his moral worth, of his native gifts,
or of any equivalent he has rendered for it of industry and self-
denial. Two youths, let us say, enter a business house about the
same age, and at the same time. They are, as near as can be,
equally matched in equipment to command success. In this
respect there is little to choose between them. One begins
entirely on his merits ; he has no influence behind him to open
doors before him as by some invisible hand. The other has in-
fluence ; no matter what it is, or how it works, he has it, and it
operates distinctly in his favour. A few years after, and the
latter has far outdistanced the former in position, salary, and
outlook. And the reason is not the capacity of either ; it is the
arbitrary advantage, the piece of luck, that one has had over the
other from the start

^ A cloth-worker in Yorkshire, by carelessness or inadvert-
ence, raises the nap of a given fabric a shade above the regulation
height. He is dismissed, and the cloth is laid aside as spoUed.
A French buyer comes into the place, and casting his eyes on it,
instantly sees for it a future. That touch of heightened nap has
done it. The manufacturer has his wits about him, and what a
week before was a mistake is now a new and valuable design
which, in a couple of years, makes for him what some of us would
regard as a substantial fortune.^

3. The omnipresence of God and of law is not questioned
But concurrent therewith there is human action, which is partly
free and sometimes irrational. This gives luck its loophole, and
at the same time prescribes its limits. Do we seriously believe
that nothing irrational ever happens in the universe ? Does
everything happen in accord with God's plan for the world

^ J. Warschauer, The Way of Understanding, 321.
' A. Shepherd, Men in the Making, 66,

284 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE

Does fore-ordination account for all things ? Is human freedom
quite an illusion ? Is it not merely conditioned by circumstances
and by habit, is it really non-existent ? All this and more must
be asserted if we are to hold that law accounts for all and that
luck is nowhere. Indeed, we shall abolish human responsibility
and sin — in theory, at least. There is no choice but that
between a mechanical world, absolutely ruled by fore-ordination,
in which there is no spontaneity or moral possibility, and a world
in which there is some chance, some luck. Human action, if at
all free and if ever foolish and wrong, introduces an element into
history which ensures that among all the unerring certainties of
nature there shall mingle a little of the erratic and the whimsical.
Man moves nature to produce many results. These must reflect
the irrational in him, and must influence not only himself, but
his fellows. Therefore we have luck, good and bad, in life. It
would be simpler, and would save much confusion, if we could
say without qualification all is law, everything happens as God
ordains. But then things are not simple, and we must accept
their complexities. This disturbing factor of luck must be
reckoned with.

^ Chance or Providence ! Chance : or Wisdom — one with
nature and man ; reaching from end to end, through all time and
all existence, orderly disposing all things, according to fixed
periods — as he describes it, in terms very like certain well-known
words of the book of Wisdom — those are the " fenced opposites "
of the speculative dilemma, the tragic embarras, of which
Aurelius cannot too often remind himself as the summary of
man's situation in the world. If there be such a provident soul
" behind the veil," truly, even to him, even in the most intimate
of those conversations, it has never yet spoken with any qiiite
irresistible assertion of its presence. Yet that speculative choice,
as he has found it, is on the whole a matter of will — " 'Tis in thy
fower," again, here too, "to think as thou wilt." And for his
part he has made his choice, and is true to it.^

^ I remember a small boy of six saying to his father, who
was entertaining him with a tale, " God always knew — long before
ever you were in the world — that you would make that up for
me some day." Well, perhaps so; but did God also foreknow
and foreordain that some hapless human being, as yet unborn,
should some day commit such and such a crime, and sufier the

* "Wftlter Pater, Marius the Epieurewn.

PROVERBS XVI. 33 285

dire penalty for it? Are we really, in the Persian poet's
phrase —

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;

Hither and thither moves, and cheeks and slays,
And one by one in the Closet lays ?

In that case, shall we not have to continue in the same strain,
and address Him thus —

O Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
Beset the Path I was to wander in,

Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin ?

If we believe in Providence to this full extent, are we not brought
back to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be or do one
thing rather than another, since we can be or do only what He
ordains — and " who withstandeth his will " ? ^

11.

The Lokd.

" But the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord."

But now, let us see what the wise man says. Does he say
that all that comes to us in life comes by chance ? Does he say
that any event whatever is wholly a matter of luck ? On the
contrary, he says that "the whole disposing thereof is of the
Lord." Whatever we believe about the freedom of the will, we
must believe that we are in the hands of God, and that just as
much in the small as in the great things.

^ Would the Eternal be so great as He is, if by reason of His
greatness He necessarily lost sight of the little ? Could the
world justly be called a masterpiece of art if the same artist
whose hand is visible in the vast did not also show itself in the
minute ? I never see one of those ancient cathedrals — where even
the lowest edge of the groundsel is elaborated in the same spirit
and with the same affectionate pains as the tower which shoots
aloft into the heavens — without perceiving in it a likeness to the

* J. Warachauer, The Way of Understanding, 327.

286 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE

work of the great Architect of the world. Here, too, it may be

said —

If imaged in the smallest part it be,

You then the beauty of the whole will see.

No ; He must be great in what is little as well as in what is large.

The daisy on the mountain sod,

Withdrawn from human view,
Was planted by the hand of God,

The hand that fashioned you.

That flower His care protects whose call

Did countless worlds create;
By condescending to the small,

He proves that He is great.*

1. This world cannot be the plaything of accident, because
obviously it is not the outcome of accident. There is nothing
chaotic, capricious, unreliable about the operations of the forces
of nature. The millionth combination of the same chemical sub-
stances in the same proportions will yield the same result as the
first. The eclipse predicted by astronomers for a certain date
comes neither a day too soon nor a day too late. The filaments
of all the thousand varieties of snow-crystals form angles of
exactly 60 to 120 degrees, neither more nor less. That does not
look like arbitrariness or want of control at the centre of things.
But there is more than that. All we have learnt of the world's
past history shows us not only order but purpose at work, a steady
progress towards something more and better. What science calls
evolution is only another term for the unceasing action of Provi-
dence on a cosmic scale, a deliberate working towards a foreseen
and predetermined aim, the gradual unfolding of a vast and
majestic design.

*[| Slowly but surely the old deistic theory of the world has
been undermined. The one absolutely impossible conception of
God, in the present day, is that which represents Him as an
occasional Visitor. Science had pushed the deist's God farther
and farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He
would be thrust out altogether, Darwinism appeared, and, under
the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend. It has conferred

' A. Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion, 146,

PROVERBS XVI. S3 287

upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit, by showing
us that we must choose between two alternatives. Either God is
everywhere present in nature, or He is nowhere. He cannot be
here and not there. He cannot delegate His power to demigods
called " second causes." In nature everything must be His work
or nothing. We must frankly return to the Christian view of
direct Divine agency, the immanence of Divine power in nature
from end to end, the belief in a God in whom not only we but all
things have their being, or we must banish Him altogether. It
seems as if, in the'providence of God, the mission of modern science
was to bring home to our unmetaphysical ways of thinking the
great truth of the Divine immanence in creation, which is not less
essential to the Christian idea of God than to a philosophical view
of nature. . . .

No doubt the evolution which was at first supposed to have
destroyed teleology is found to be more saturated with teleology
than the view which it superseded. And Christianity can take
up the new as it did the old, and find in it a confirmation of its
own belief. It is a great gain to have eliminated chance, to find
science declaring that there must be a reason for everything, even
when it cannot hazard a conjecture as to what the reason is.^

2. Every free action is surrounded by and dovetails into events
absolutely determined by law. The presence of a man in the place
where a flood happens, or his owning property there, may have
a little chance in it. But the flood itself has a chain of causes
which fully account for it. There may be some chance in the dis-
covery of a gold-mine. But there was none in the formation of
the gold or in its being deposited where it was found. That tree
which fell so disastrously had the direction of its fall determined
a century ago when it was bent as a sapling. Forces under law
mingle with all that seems free, catch it up, and deal with its
results. So that " nothing walks with aimless feet." God is con-
stantly reducing even human life to order. As we develop there
is found less and less of the incalculable in us. " The steps of a
good man are ordered by the Lord." So are those of an evil man.
Now to the extent to which human action becomes blessedly or
cursedly automatic, to that extent chance is eliminated.

^ When Napoleon was returning from Egypt to France, Nelson
was on the watch for him, and even lay for a while with his whole
fleet close to the two ships of the fugitive. A thick fog, however,

^ Aubrey Moore, in Lux Mundi.

288 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE

settled down between them ; and had it not been for that fog, the
state of the world would have been different from what it now is.
In solemn grandeur the ancient avalanches lie couched on the icy
mountain-tops, and repose from year to year, until, perhaps, the
wing of a bird, as it flies quickly past, touches them, and by their
fall some thousands of human beings lose their lives. It is true
that little touches do not make great revolutions, and that as little
do trivial incidents hinder them. It is true that the avalanche
must have been accumulating for many a year if it was to destroy
the city, and that Napoleon must have been the man he was if
the fog was to change the condition of the world. Still the touch
of the bird's wing and the curtain of fog were likewise necessary
to bring about the issue.^

^ Of all the old superstitious stories, I think one of the most
interesting is that told by Cicero, because it not only illustrates the
habit of mind, but throws a curious sidelight upon the pronuncia-
tion of Latin. He was at Brundisium, I think, about to start by
sea for Greece. A vendor came along the quay, crying Caunean
figs for sale. " Cauneas ! Cauneas ! " " Of course," said Cicero,
" I decided at once not to go, and took measures accordingly."
The fact is that Cauneas was the usual pronunciation — thus much
is clear — of the Latin words. Gave ne eas (" Mind you don't go ").
But the odd thing is that it does not seem to have occurred to
Cicero to warn his fellow-passengers of the prognostication. He
only considered it as a sign which he had been fortunate enough
to be able to interpret. And this is very characteristic of the
general attitude. Providence is regarded, not as a just dispenser
of good and evil, but as powerless to avert a catastrophe, and only
able to intimate to a favoured few, by very inadequate means, the
disasters in store ; and it is this that makes the whole thing into
rather a degrading business, because it seems to imply that there
is a whimsical and malicious spirit behind it all, that loves to
disappoint and upset, and to play men ugly and uncomfortable
tricks, like Caliban in Setebos.

Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.'

(1) God does not intervene in the detailed use we make of His
gift of freedom — else were it not freedom at all. Our liberty is pro-
videntially bestowed, but not the employment we choose to make
of it. It is foolish to charge Heaven with man's misdeeds, foolish
to imagine that our sins and the evil we inflict upon ourselves

* A. Tholuck, Hours of Christian Devotion, 144.

* A. C. Benson, Along the Rood, 165.

PROVERBS XVI. 33 289

and each other lie at Heaven's door, or were fore-ordered by the
Most High. " He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is good," but
He contents Himself with the showing : He asks for a free, not a
forced, obedience, and holds us responsible for our choice. True,
this gift of liberty involves much sorrow and suffering ; but only
by the exercise of free-will can character be formed, and we know
that sorrow and suffering — while we would not choose them for
their own sakes — have often and often been the means of bring-
ing out the finer qualities of men and women.

^ There are three great principles in life which weave its
warp and woof, apparently incompatible with each other, yet they
harmonize, and, in their blending, create this strange life of ours.
The first is, our fate is in our own hands, and our blessedness or
misery is the exact result of our own acts. The second is, " There
is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."
The third is, " The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the
strong " ; but time and chance happen(eth) to them all. Accident,
human will, the shaping will of Deity : these things make up life.
Or rather, perhaps, we see a threefold causality from some defect
in our spiritual eyesight. Could we see as He sees, all would be
referable to one principle which would contain them all ; as the
simple, single law of gravitation embraces the complex phenomena
of the universe ; and as, on the other hand, by pressing the eye-
balls so as to destroy their united impression, you may see all
things double.^

(2) And yet God does not let us go oui- own way ; He stands
aside, but only a little way aside, watching all the while, and
holding the issue in His mighty hands. We cannot read history
or individual experience without coming to the conclusion that
here and there, unperceived at the time, but none the less real,
was God's guiding, God's restraining influence. Some deep grief,
which at the time almost crushes us, proves an inspiration ; some
pitiful tragedy which wrings our heart is the starting-point of
triumph ; our light affliction worketh for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory, Mrs. Josephine Butler's loss of a beloved
daughter makes her devote herself to the rescue of other mothers'
daughters from a fate worse than death ; John Brown is shot at
Harper's Ferry for his anti-slavery principles, but his soul goes
marching on, and his memory serves to win liberty for the slaves

^ Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 243.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — IQ

290 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF PROVIDENCE

of America ; Jesus is nailed to a shameful cross, and that cross
becomes the power of God unto salvation.

^ "Unless the hairs of your head are all numbered there is
no God." The words are George MacDonald's, and they put the
challenge to faith in its clearest and boldest form. We all want
to believe that our hairs are numbered ; that we are the objects
of a special loving care. We feel with Michelet : " Let the senti-
ment of the loving cause disappear, and it is over with me. If I
have no longer the happiness of feeling this world to be loved, of
feeling myself to be loved, I can no longer live. Hide me in the
tomb." Yes, the hairs of our head are all numbered. Whenever
we pray we affirm that. And we can match this affirmation, in
our being's highest act, against all the materialisms and all the
devil's advocacies, from whatever quarter they come. For the
soul here is sure of itself. It moves here in a sphere the world
cannot enter, still less conquer. Quis Separahit ? In face of life's
sternest tragedies, of its utmost extremities, it joins in the
Apostle's triumphant hymn of faith, knowing with him that
neither life nor death, things present nor things to come, can shut
it off from the Infinite Love.^

3. There is less luck in human affairs than is popularly sup-
posed, and he is foolish who fears or trusts it. The truth is that
chance is nothing but a vocable which we employ when there is
a gap in our wisdom, and our insight into the connexion of cause
and effect is at fault. It is more a name for something in our-
selves than for anything in nature without. We designate as
''chance those effects which do not seem to have proceeded from pur-
pose and design. Thus we call it chance when any event occurs
which was not intended by man; just as our Lord says, "By
chance there came down a certain priest that way." And in that
case the word has no objectionable meaning. We also speak of
chance, however, when a thing happens which seems to us con-
trary to the plan and intention of God, and then the word is a
mere word. We speak of necessity when the weary veteran, after
the eyes — the windows of sense — have been closed, and the door
of the mouth seldom opens, and the grey head has long worn the
livery of death, dies by the decay of nature. For we perceive
that there is a plan and design in the mowing down of the grain
when it has reached maturity, and in the discharge of the labourer
*J. Brierley, Tli£ Secret of Living, 167.

PROVERBS XVI. 33 291

from the field when his blunted tools are of no further use.
When, however, the youth is unexpectedly snatched away, by
such a casualty as the fall, perhaps, of a tile from the roof ; when
the goodly framework is shattered before the spirit it contained
has unfolded its wings, — we then speak of chance, because we do
not here see the Divine purpose.

^ " Chance " is a relation. The word does mean something ;
and it is, therefore, foolish to tell children, that " there is no such
thing as chance." It is a relation in which the connexion
between cause and effect is too subtle for our dilcovery or too
complex for us to calculate. The planet's motion, for instance,
we can reckon and predict ; the fall of dice we cannot, not because
the case is too subtle, but because the calculation is too complex.
So, too, with a projectile like a cannon ball, — given the direction
and quantity of force, we can tell where it will light. It is
different with the fall of a leaf, owing to its irregular shape and
the uncertain impact of the gusts of wind that may carry it we
know not whither. Yet, in the strict sense, there is as little
" chance " in the fall of the dice as in the course of the planet, or
in the fall of the leaf as in the destination of the cannon ball.
Chance is not a thing, but a relation. With God there is no
chance — because He knows all forces and their direction.^

^ A man was speaking to me not long ago about one of the
leading commercial men in this city. " What is there in him or
about him to explain his success ? " asked the man, and he
answered his own question with the round assertion that " it was
all luck." It happened that I had some reliable information
about the man under discussion, and I want you to have it.
Thirty years ago he was working from ten to twelve hours in the
day as just an ordinary workman. At the close of each day's toil
he had his programme of studies, which, in the range and character
of the subjects attacked, would not have disgraced a good student
at any university. Eventually his attention to business and his
marked attainments won for him the recognition of his employers,
which meant in after years a place which was ultimately a leading
place, as one of them. Yet this was the man who was said to
have won his success by a lucky turn of the wheel.^

% Sir Frederick Treves once said to the students at the Aberdeen
University : " The man who is content to wait for a stroke of good
fortune will probably wait until he has a stroke of paralysis."

^ A. A. Hodge, in Princetoniana, by C. A. Salmond, 172.
^ A. Shepherd, Men in the Making, 73.

The Lamp of the Lord.

fl93

Literature.

Banks (L. A.), The Problems of Youth, 298.

Brooks (P.), The Candle of the Lord, 1.

Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, vi. 211.

Jerdan (C), Messages to the Children, 36.

Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 144.

Parkhurst (C. H.), Three Gates on a Side, 35.

Koberts (R.), My Jewels, 245.

Robinson (W. V.), Sunbeams for Sundays, 160.

Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 166.

Waj^len (H.), Mountain Pathways, 95.

Christian World Pulpit, Ixxv. 311 (W. King).

Eomiletic Review, xx. 137 (J. T. Whitley).

The Lamp of the Lord.

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.— Prov. xx. 27.

1. The picture which these words suggest is very simple. An
unlighted candle is standing in the darkness, and some one comes
to light it. A blazing bit of paper holds the fire at first, but it
is vague and fitful. It flares and wavers, and at any moment may
go out. But the vague, uncertain, flaring blaze touches the candle,
and the candle catches fire, and at once you have a steady flame.
It burns straight and clear and constant. The candle gives the
fire a manifestation-point for all the room which is illuminated by
it. The candle is glorified by the fire, and the fire is manifested
by the candle. The two bear witness that they were made for
one another by the way in which they fulfil each other's life.
That fulfilment comes by the way in which the inferior substance
renders obedience to its superior. The candle obeys the fire.
The docile wax acknowledges that the subtle flame is its master
and it yields to his power ; and so, like every faithful servant of
a noble master, it at once gives its master's nobility the chance
to utter itself, and its own substance is clothed with a glory which
is not its own. The disobedient granite, if you try to burn it,
neither gives the fire a chance to show its brightness nor gathers
any splendour to itself. It only glows with sullen resistance, and,
as the heat increases, splits and breaks, but will not yield. But
the candle obeys, and so in it the scattered fire finds a point of
permanent and clear expression.

2. Now the text asserts that the spirit of man is the lamp of
Jehovah. The phrase is strong and emphatic. It is not that the
Lord has put a lamp in the spirit of man ; it is much more than
that ; the spirit itself is the lamp. The spirit of man is a torch,
a lighthouse, planted in the centre of the temple of his nature,
shedding its sacred light upon the inmost abysses of his bein^

296 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

" searching all the inward parts of the moral nature." This
inward lamp " lighteth every man that coraeth into the world."
The multitudes of our race destitute of the written revelation
have nevertheless this inward revelation. The human spirit
instinctively apprehends certain great spiritual truths without
reasoning upon them. " For when the Gentiles, which have not
the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these,
having not the law, are a law unto themselves ; which show the
work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also
bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or
else excusing one another." The human spirit is a revelation
from God and is itself a Divine Scripture as sacred as the written
"Word itself. It may be darkened by the mist and ♦miasma arising
from the corruptions of our nature, so also may the written
revelation be perverted and beclouded by ignorance, prejudice, by
selfish passions and unbelief, but this inward lamp is extinguished
in none, not even in the most savage or debased of the human
race. Under every possible condition of life, the spirit of man
witnesses, with voices more or less distinct, to certain great funda-
mental verities relating to both God and man.

% In the " Odes of Solomon," we read (Ode 25) : " Thou didst
set me a lamp at my right hand, and at my left, and in me there
shall be nothing without Light, and I was clothed with the
covering of thy Spirit, and I have risen above that of skin, for thy
right hand lifted me up, and removed sickness from me, and I
became mighty in the truth, and holy by thy righteousness."
Again we read (Ode 40) : " My spirit exults in His love, and in
Him my soul shines."

The Spirit of Man is a Lamp.

The ancient world believed that fire and life were one and the
same thing. Life was a flame, a lamp, a torch. The human soul
was of the nature of fire ; and fire, being the common element of
the gods and their creatures, was the soul of the universe. Now
the ancients were entirely right as regards animal life, for that
depends upon the constant burning up of the food which we eat,
by the help of the air which we breathe. Our bodies move about

PROVERBS XX. 27 297

and are warm, just like so many locomotive steam-engines
because of the fire that is always burning within them. Life is
really a fire, and the food we eat is the fuel that feeds it. And
so one of the heathen images for death, which we see sometimes
on gravestones and cemetery gates, is a torch turned upside
down.

But man is a complex, compound, mysterious being, possessing a
threefold nature, — body, mind, spirit — these three, and the greatest
of these is the spirit. The hocly demands light, air, food, clothing,
a habitation to dwell in. The mind is the thinking, the reasoning
power ; with this he acquires knowledge of men, of things, of the
universe, of its laws and forces. The spirit is the religious, the
worshipping part of his nature. This renders him capable of
receiving God, of enjoying God, of communing with God, and of
resembling God. " There is a spirit in man : and the inspiration
of the Almighty giveth them understanding." God may pass
through a rock, but that rock cannot be inspired, for it has no
spirit. God may pass through the animal, but the animal cannot
be inspired, for it has no spiritual nature. It would be out of
place and unnatural to speak of an inspired dog or an inspired
horse ; but man, in the possession of spirit, may be conscious of
the incoming, the indwelling of the Spirit of God. That Divine
Spirit can, and does occasionally, communicate to the human spirit
thoughts and feelings that can find full expression only in ex-
claiming with Paul " whether in the body, or out of the body, I
cannot tell : God knoweth."

1. The spirit is a lamp because it is endowed with the light
of reason. The Book of Proverbs lays great stress upon in-
struction and understanding ; it commends knowledge as one
of the main paths that lead to a full and worthy life, and that
because all true knowledge culminates in the knowledge of God.
Religious people have not always had a fitting appreciation of the
worth of knowledge : they have occasionally talked as if reason
were the enemy of faith, and as though we had to choose between
head and heart — or rather as though the head had to be cut off in
order that the heart might beat the more strongly ! But there is
no conflict between faith and reason, between religion and science ;
we need not turn down the lamp of the understanding in order to

298 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

luxuriate in some dim religious light, so-called. As the Apostle
says, " Ye are all sons of light, and sons of the day : we are not of
the night, nor of darkness." All truth is from God — all truth
leads to God ; let us welcome it and trust it ; let us " hear instruc-
tion, and refuse it not."

2. The lamp burns with the light of conscience. Every
human being has a conscience, yet few people know its nature ;
just as everybody drinks water, but few people understand
its chemical composition. In the case of the water we
drink, fortunately we are refreshed just as fully with the
peasant's ignorance as with the chemical knowledge of Michael
Faraday. It is not so, however, with conscience. The more fully
we understand its nature and laws — other things being equal — the
better can we follow its guidance, and the nobler lives we may
lead. So, in addition to the interest attaching to the subject as a
fascinating problem in the science of mind, it has' also a great
interest as a question bearing directly upon practical life. For
conscience will not tell us in every case just what is the right
thing to do. We have often seen equally conscientious people on
opposite sides. The first and most important thing is that there
should shine and burn in us an unquenchable conviction that
there is a right, and that we ought under all circumstances to
follow the dictates of our awakened moral sense. We have to
believe that these dictates are from God — not the variable rules of
mere expediency and opportunisna, but of Divine authority ; and
as in the symbolism of the older Churches a sacred lamp was
kept alight in the sanctuary, which it was held sacrilege to
extinguish, so we must beware of putting out or darkening, by
sophisms and self-deception, that candle of the Lord which He has
lit in our spirits.

^ Being convinced that the inner light was universal, Fox had
the courage to believe that heathen people were led of the Spirit
of God. Thus in America, when a doctor denied that the Indians
possessed any such light, Fox called an Indian, and asked
" Whether or not, when he lied or did wrong to any one, there
was not something in him that reproved him for it ? " The Indian
said there was. Here Fox anticipated a view that has since
been forced upon Christian thought by the comparative study of
religions. He believed that God had not left Himself anywhere

PROVERBS XX. 27 299

without witness, and he maintained this faith before the know-
ledge of non-Christian religions brought it into prominence. He
did not hesitate to call this inner light the inward Christ, even
among the heathen who knew not Christ's name. For he assumed
that the witness of God was one, and that this Spirit which re-
proved the Indian was the Spirit which would bring him to
Christ. This may still be considered assumption, but it is an
assumption the Christian must make.^

^ It would seem, indeed, as though the sense of sin did not
reside in the act at all, but only in the sense that the act is
committed in defiance of light and higher instinct. But however
much we may philosophize about sin or attempt to analyse its
essence, there is some dark secret there, of which from time to
time we are grievously conscious. Who does not know the sense
of failure to overcome, of lapsing from a hope or a purpose, the
burden of the thought of some cowardice or unkindness which we
cannot undo and which we need not have committed ? No resolute
determinism can ever avail us against the stern verdict of that
inner tribunal of the soul, which decides, too, by some instinct
that we cannot divine, to sting and torture us with the memory
of deeds, the momentousness and importance of which we should
utterly fail to explain to others. There are things in my own
past which would be met with laughter and ridicule if I attempted
to describe them, that still make me blush to recollect with a
sense of guilt and shame, and seem indelibly branded upon the
mind. There are things, too, of which I do not feel ashamed
which, if I were to describe them to others, would be received
with a sort of incredulous consternation, to think that I could
have performed them. That is the strange part of the inner
conscience, that it seems so wholly independent of tradition or
convention.^

II.

God Kindles the Lamp.

1. All nature tells us that God is light, and that He ever
seeks for opportunities of manifesting that light which is so often
imprisoned and only waiting to be released by the touch of man.
We are constantly finding that there are great resources for light
in this world of ours, more than we had ever imagined. Not
even at night, when this hemisphere is in the shade and does not
^ H. G. Wood, George. Fox, 145. ^ A. C. Benson, The Silent Isle, 133.

300 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

enjoy the light of the sun, does God leave it to darkness. Then
the moon and stars shine forth : but beyond all that, then does
man draw upon the resources of light which lie buried or hidden
in nature till he learns how to call them forth. In the history of
the ages there is no progress greater than in the discovery of the
possibilities on the part of man of producing light. This age
supplies exceptional illustrations of this. Man is finding, as he
never did before, that nature has light-giving capacities wliich
need only be touched to be brought forth; that God has filled
even the material world with possibilities of grand outbursts
of light. What would God have us learn from all this ? That
there is more light in His universe than we had ever thought ;
that He, true to His own nature, has placed in it capacities
for outshining which are chained up for the present, but
which He calls men to unloose, so that they may burst forth
into light.

^ It is not surprising that, prominent among the idolatries of
the world, there should be found the worship of fire and of light.
Once become an idolater, and it becomes easy to worship fire —
that wonderful thing in nature which we find everywhere and in
every object, even in ice ; that which you can strike out of every-
thing, especially when you strike with a suddenness that seems to
take it unawares. The old flint and tinder were but an outward
visible sign of an inward visible presence everywhere. God's fire
is to be found in all nature ; often latent, but at such times it
seems to be watchidg for opportunities of manifestation. Deep
beneath the surface of the earth there is a lake of fire which is
checked only by mighty forces, and which, here and there, finds
an outlet for its seething, restless waves in volcanoes that heave,
and groan, and belch out liquid lava. The heavens, too, are full
of kindling orbs. Fire is well-nigh omnipresent, and omnipresence
is one of the attributes of Deity.^

2. God's favourite method of letting His light shine is through
man. Man's spirit kindles more brightly with God's light than
all the suns in the heavens. God's favourite method of making
Himself known is through man. The choice lamp of the Lord is
the spirit of man. He has lit up tapers in suns which flame in
the heavens, but when God would use His best lamp, He comes
to men — " The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord." For only

^ D. Davies, Taiks with Men, Women and Childrin, vi. 211.

PROVERBS XX. 27 301

a person can truly utter a person. Only from a character can a
character be echoed. You might write it all over the skies that
God is just, but it would not burn there. It would be, at best,
only a bit of knowledge, never a gospel, never something which
it would gladden the hearts of men to know. That comes only
when a human life, capable of a justice like God's, made just by
God, glows with His justice in the eyes of men, a candle of the
Lord.

^ We have seen monuments, tablets, tombstones with names,
dates, events recorded that were not readable on account of the
dust and moss of years which had accumulated and covered the
inscription. It is not necessary to engrave the stone afresh ; only
sweep away the accumulation of years, and you shall know to
whose memory that stone was raised. So if you will rub off the
incrustations of sin and error gathered over the human soul you
will find the Great Name — God — written deep and large in the
very depth of the spirit. Just as the flower has an instinctive
tendency to turn towards the sun, so man, even in his lowest
estate, has certain instincts which impel him towards God and to
cry, " My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God : When shall
I come and appear before God ? " You possess capacities, you
have wants which the Infinite alone can fill and satisfy. Until
the God you have lost is restored to His rightful Sovereignty in
your heart, the deepest cry of your spirit will be, " 0 that I knew
where I might find him ! " ^

(1) God lets His light shine in ordinary human life. He
transfigures even the physical in man. You have seen many a
human face that has become angelic through the outshining of
the Divine presence. You have seen God's light in a man's heart
shine forth through his countenance, though that countenance has
been by no means naturally beautiful. Some wondrous brightness
in the eye or radiance in the face told us that there was a lamp
inside. But where God shines most is through the spiritual in
man. Look at the history of Divine revelation — for there we
have the greatest outshining of God, from the earliest age until now
— and say whether there was anything that revealed so much of
God throughout the old dispensation as the inspired utterances of
Divinely enlightened men ? God set their hearts aflame ; thus
they spoke to men in melting words. They were the lamps of

1 R. Roberts.

302 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

God to their age and generation. God has never been without
witness; He has never been without His chosen hghts, His
messengers who have testified of His truth, His love, and His
purity. Take away from this world and from the record of
it the lives of holy men, brilliant because consecrated by a
Divine touch that kindled them into a flame, and what have
you left ?

^ The benighted traveller in the snow has sometimes caught
sight of a candle in a shepherd's hut. It has been to him the
most joyful of all moments ; it is the promise of rest. Even such,
I think, is the thought of the proverb. The man who uttered it
knew well the saying of the old book of Genesis that when God
had wandered six days through creation He rested in man. He
had been led on by the glimmer of one candle — the light of a
human soul. It was the only place of rest the Father saw in all
the vast expanse. There was no other dwelling for the spirit of
my Father but my spirit. He could not find shelter in any other
home. Not " where the bee sucks " could my Father dwell. Not
where the bird sings could His heart be glad. Not where the
cattle browse could His life repose. Not where the stars shine
could He find His household fire. One far-off candle alone gave
the sign of home. It was my spirit.^

(2) When at length God gave the greatest of revelations, a
revelation which was the consummation of all preceding ones;
when the Sun of Eighteousness arose with healing in His wings ;
then when the morning stars which heralded the light had dis-
appeared in the brightness of His rising, when the Son of God
came He took not on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of
Abraham. When God would shine forth in all the brightness of
His grace, thank God, it was in human form. His greatest gift
was in the " man of sorrows and acquainted with grief " : a man
though God : human though Divine. He who cg-me thus in human
form was " the effulgence of the Father's glory, the express image
of his person."

^ One of the heroes of the old Greek legends of whom the
Greeks were very fond was called Prometheus. His name means
" forethought." He was the friend of the human race, and the
inventor and teacher of the arts which adorn life. The Greeks
believed that Prometheus took away from man the evil gift of

' G. Matheson, Leaves for Quiet Hours, 144.

PROVERBS XX. 27 303

being able to foresee the future ; and that he was the first who
brought fire to men, and taught its use. Pitying the misery of
men, who knew not how to cook, he stole fire from heaven, and
gave it to them. He also formed men out of clay or mud, and
made them alive by putting in a spark of fire, or causing the
winds to breathe life into them. But we who have the Bible in
our hands know that the Lord Jesus Christ is the real Prometheus.
His human soul, indeed, is a lamp which God kindled at Bethlehem
nearly nineteen hundred years ago. But as the God-man, He is a
Fire, — " the Dayspring from on high," — " the true Light which,
coming into the world, lighteth every man." " In him is life ;
and the life is the light of men." He is " come to send fire
on the earth " — the fire of grace, and refining fire, as well as
the fire of judgment. He baptizes " with the Holy Ghost and with
fire" — to enlighten the mind, and purify the conscience, and
warm the heart with the Divine love.^

^ I think I am beginning to feel something of the intense
pride and atheism of my own heart, of its hatred to truth, of its
utter lovelessness ; and something I do hope, that I have seen
very dimly of the way in which Christ, by being the Light and
Truth manifested, shines into the heart and puts light there, even
while we feel that the Light and Truth is still all in Him, and
that in ourselves there is nothing but thick darkness. I do not
know whether you have been led to think as much as I have
lately about all those texts which represent Him as Light, as
shining into the heart, and in connexion therewith, as wrestling
with the powers of darkness. " There was darkness over all the
land until the ninth hour." "God is light, and in him is no
darkness at all." He that "caused the light to shine out of
darkness shine into your heart." They afforded me very great
delight some time ago when nothing else would ; an intense thick
darkness, darkness that might be felt, brooding over my mind,
till the thought that had been brought to me as if from Heaven —
" the light of the Sun is not in you but out of you, and yet you
can see everything by it if you will open your eyes " — gave me
more satisfaction than any other could. Since then another train
of feeling led me to experience the intense misery of pride and
self, as if that were the seal of the darkness, and that I could find
no relief but in joining the two thoughts together : it was pride,
it was self, it was sin, which separated between me and God,
which produced the darkness. Christ had taken that away, and
therefore the true Light shineth.^

^ C. Jeidau, Messages to (he Children, 38.

' The Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, i. 119.

304 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

III.

The Office of the Lamp is to Shine.

1. The lamp of God in our nature gives forth a self-searching
light. — It searches the hidden recesses of a man's own nature. It
is that by which God seeks to make it impossible for us to sin
with impunity. It is the Lord's light in man that protests
agamst the darkness of ignorance and unbelief, and brings to view
life's privileges and responsibilities. It is the flame in the heart
that claims relationship with Him who is light and in whom is
no darkness at all.

^ " I cannot do this," said a Christian merchant, in reference
to some business operations in which lie was asked to take part,
" I cannot do this. There is a man inside of me that won't let me
do it. He talks to me of nights about it, and I have to do
business in a different way." Thank God for the restraining
testimony of conscience ! Let us always listen to the witness, and
follow its guidance. Let Lord Erskine's rule be ours. That rule
he stated publicly at the bar in these unmistakable words : " It
was the first command and counsel of my youth, always to do
what my conscience told me to be my duty, and leave the conse-
quence to God. I have hitherto followed it, and have no reason
to complain that any obedience to it has been even a temporal
sacrifice ; I have found it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity
and wealth, and I shall point it out as such to my children."
Akin to this was John Wesley's rule: "To follow my own
conscience, without any regard to consequences, or prudence, so
called, is a rule which I have followed for many years, and hope
to follow to my life's end." ^

2. The lamp is to be God's ivitness in the world. — God says to
each of us : " Let your light so shine before men, that they may
see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
The Christian, wlierever he goes, is to show forth certain clear-
shining qualities which will commend his Christianity, and so
lead men, whether consciously or unconsciously, to Christ. Lives
are the best preachers ; and many an obscure Christian man or
woman, filled with the constraining love of Christ, practising day
by day the dear simplicities of the gospel, preaches a sermon which

» J. T. Whitley.

PROVERBS XX. 27 305

he who runs may read, or listen to, and whose closing notes are not
heard on this earth at all. Lives are the best preachers ; it is the}'
alone that " adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things."

^ You remember those lovely lines which Shakespeare places in
Portia's mouth when she returns from Venice to her home in
Belmont :

That light we see is burning in my hall.
How far that little candle throws his beams !
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

And we are candles — our spirits the candles of the Lord ; lights
whose clear shining may haply show to some perplexed soul the
absolute worth of right-doing, the glory of steadfastness, the
reward of trust, the joy of self-giving, self-forgetting love, the
infinite affection of God — the way home to Him who is ready to
receive the soul that longs for Him.^

^ When I was a boy and lived on a farm in the North-Western
frontier, we used to go to church in an old log schoolhouse in the
woods. Evening meetings in those days were always announced
to begin " at early candle-light." There were not even oil-lamps
in the old schoolhouse. There was an unwritten rule in the
neighbourhood that each family attending the service should
bring at least one candle. The first man who arrived lighted
his candle and put it up in one of the wooden candlesticks, or
set it on the window-sill, fastened at the base in a little tallow-
drip, dripping the tallow hot and then steadying the candle in
it before it cooled. So every man who came in lighted his
candle, and as the congregation grew the light grew. If there
was a small congregation, there was what might be called " a dim
religious light," and if there was a large congregation, the place
was illuminated by the light of many candles. Now it should be
like that in the spiritual illumination which we give in the world.
Every one of us should add our own light to the combined
illumination of all other faithful souls.^

^ In Athens, long ago, games used to be held in honour of
the Grecian gods and heroes. One of these was a torch-race —
that is, a race of torch-bearers — which was run at night in honour
of Prometheus. The starting-point was a mile and a half out of
the city, in the olive grove where Plato had his " Academy," this
spot being chosen because Prometheus had a sanctuary there. The
winning-post was within the city ; and the runner who reached it

^ J. Warschauer, The Way of Understanding, 177.
2 L. A. Banks, The Problems of Youth, 298.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 20

3o6 THE LAMP OF THE LORD

first with his torch still burning gained the prize. In like manner
our Christian life here on earth is " the race that is set before us."
We shall have run that race well, if, when we come at last into
God's presence, our lights are still burning. " They that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that
turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." ^

3. This lamp needs contimial tending. — Man is selfish and dis-
obedient, and will not let his life burn at all. Man is wilful and
passionate, and kindles his life with ungodly fire. Man is narrow
and bigoted, and makes the light of God shine with his own
special colour. In certain lands, for certain holy ceremonies, they
prepare the candles with most anxious care. The very bees which
distil the wax are sacred. They range in gardens planted with
sweet flowers for their use alone. The wax is gathered by conse-
crated hands ; and then the shaping of the candles is a holy task,
performed in holy places, to the sound of hymns, and in the
atmosphere of prayers. All this is done because the candles are
to burn in the most lofty ceremonies on most sacred days. With
what care must the man be made whose spirit is to be the candle
of the Lord ! It is his spirit which God is to kindle with Himself.
Therefore the spirit must be the precious part of him. The body
must be valued only for the protection and the education which
the soul may gain by it. And the power by which his spirit shall
become a candle is obedience. Therefore obedience must be the
struggle and desire of his life ; obedience not hard and forced, but
ready, loving, and spontaneous ; the obedience of the child to the
father, of the candle to the flame ; the doing of duty not merely
that duty may be done, but that the soul in doing it may become
capable of receiving and uttering God ; the bearing of pain not
merely because the pain must be borne, but in order that the
bearing of it may make the soul able to burn with the Divine fire
which found it in the furnace ; the repentance of sin and accept-
ance of forgiveness, not merely that the soul may be saved from
the fire of hell, but that it may be touched with the fire of heaven,
and shine with the love of God, as the stars, for ever.

^ You are a part of God ! You have no place or meaning in
this world but in relationship to Him. The full relationship can
be realized only by obedience. Be obedient to Him, and you shall

* C. Jordan, Messages to the Children, 40. »

PROVERBS XX. 27 307

shine by His light, not your own. Then you cannot be dark, for
He shall kindle you. Then you shall be as incapable of burning
with false passion as you shall be quick to answer with the true.
Then the devil may hold his torch to you, as he held it to the
heart of Jesus in the desert, and your heart shall be as un-
inflammable as His. But as soon as God touches you, you shall
burn with a light so truly your own that you shall reverence
your own mysterious life, and yet so truly His that pride shall be
impossible. What a philosophy of human life is that ! " 0, to
be nothing, nothing ! " cries the mystic singer in his revival
hymn, desiring to lose himself in God. " Nay, not that ; O to be
something, something," remonstrates the unmystical man, longing
for work, ardent for personal life and character. Where is the
meeting of the two? How shall self-surrender meet that hifh
self-value without which no man can justify his living and
honour himself in his humanity ? Where can they meet but in
this truth ? Man must be something that he may be nothing.
The something which he must be consists in simple fitness to
utter the Divine life which is the only original power in the
universe. And then man must be nothing that he may be some-
thing. He must submit himself in obedience to God, that so God
may use him, in some way in which his special nature only could
be used, to illuminate and help the world.^

^ Long ago one could have seen, in not a few churches, upon
Christmas Eve, two small lights, symbolizing the Divine and
human natures, being gradually brought together until they
blended in one brilliant flame. This truth was also typified in
the cloven tongues of fire that hovered over the disciples' heads
upon the day of Pentecost. So with the restoration of the vital
connexions between man and God through Jesus Christ, the
Holy Spirit shall commingle with our spirit, intensifying the holy
flame, so that it shall penetrate to the farthest reaches of life and
character. Our moral vision shall be corrected, so that truth
and error, right and wrong shall appear to us in sharply-defined
contrast. He shall lead us into all truth.

Come, Light serene and still.
Our inmost bosoms fill;

Dwell in each breast :
We know no dawn but Thine;
Send forth Thy beams divine,
On our dark souls to shine,

And make us blest.^

^ P. Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, 17. « W. King.

The Training op Children.

309

Literature.

Clayton (J. W.), The Genius of God, 50.

Horton (E. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositor's Bible), 303.

Mackey (H. 0.), Miniature Sermons, 62.

Mellor (E.), The Hem of Christ's Garment, 52.

Miller (J.), Sermons, i. 137.

Murray (A.), The Children for Christ, 170.

Norton (J. N.), Old Paths, 479.

Rutherford (J. S.), The Seriousness of Life, 167.

Ryle (J. C), The Upper Room, 282.

Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 215.

Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 124.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. 341 (H. Jones).

3»

The Training of Children.

Train up a child in the way he should go,

And even when he is old he will not depart from it. —Prov. xxii. 6.

The text may have originated with Solomon. If so, it contains
the judgment of the most observant and sagacious of men. More
probably it was a proverb in Israel, and therefore expresses the
general judgment of the race which has trained its children more
admirably than any other which has yet appeared on earth.

It is the Scripture expression of the principle on which all
education rests, that a child's training can decide what his after-
life is to be. Without this faith there could be no thought of
anything like education ; when this faith is elevated to a trust in
God and His promises, it grows into the assurance that a parent's
labour will not be in vain in the Lord.

The Pakents.

"The Lord hath given the father honour over the children,
and hath confirmed the authority of the mother over the sons,"
says Ecclesiasticus. It is a rare opportunity which is given to
parents. No sphere of influence which they may acquire can be
like it; other spheres may be wider, but they can never be so
intense or so decisive.

1. To govern their children, parents must first be able to
govern themselves. A large part of parental discipline must
consist in rewards and punishments. God's government is full of
them. Every act of obedience u» His law is rewarded ; every act
of disobedience is punished. But the Divine punishments are

312 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

administered without a tinge of passion. When parents punish
children, it is often only bad temper at work, A child by his
fretful ways makes the house a purgatory until his mother's
patience is exhausted. Then she boxes his ears, and so makes
him realize, not that she can govern him, but that she cannot
govern herself,

^ The way to train the child is to train yourself. What you
are, he will be. If your hands are morally dirty, his life will be
dirtied by the home handling he gets. If he is to obey his mother
he must breathe in a spirit of obedience from his mother. Your
child will never obey more than you do. The spirit of disobedience
in your heart to God, of failure to obey, of preferring your own
way to God's, will be breathed in by your child as surely as he
breathes the air into his lungs, A spirit of quiet confidence in
God, in the practical things that pinch and push, will breathe itself
into the child, A poised spirit, a keen mind, a thoughtful tongue,
a cheery hopefulness, an earnest purpose, in mother and father
will be taken into the child's being with every breath. And the
reverse is just as true. Every child is an accurate bit of French-
plate faithfully showing the likeness of mother and father and
home. We must be in heart what we would have the child be in
life,i

2. A successful parent will be one who makes the training of
the children a constant and religious study. It is the last subject
in the world to be left to haphazard. From the first a clear aim
must be kept in view, " Is my great object that this boy shall be
a true, a noble, a God-fearing man, serving his day and generation
in the way God shall appoint ? " That is the question which the
parent puts to himself,

^ Among the Bishop's obiter dicta on education is the follow-
ing : — " The old heathens had very right notions about the way in
which a child ought to be trained up. They had great belief in a
pure domestic education. One of them said, ' Let nothing unclean
ever enter into the house where a little child is,' no drunken man,
no quarrelling father or mother, no bad language, no careless,
slovenly habits ; let nothing of the sort be seen in the house where
dwells the little child. A Roman poet has said, 'The greatest
possible reverence is due to a child.' Some parents are wonder-
fully careless about what sort of things they say before their

' S D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 253.

PROVERBS XXII. 6 313

children. They seem to forget that the little children are listen-
ing, and that their characters are being formed by ten thousand
insensible influences that surround them day by day." ^

3. Parents must live near to God if they are to make God real to
their children. A mother must hold very real converse with her
Lord if His reality is to become obvious to her little ones. " As
a child," says one, " I have had a feeling that God and Jesus were
such particular friends of mamma's, and were honoured more than
words could tell." If such an impression is to be created, depend
upon it God and Jesus must be particular friends of ours. No
talk, however pious, can create that impression unless the hallowed
friendship actually exists.

^ Mrs. Haldane [the mother of James and Eobert Haldane,
who did so much for evangelical religion in Scotland at the
beginning of the nineteenth century] belonged to a family in
which there had been much true religion. " She lived," said her
eldest son, " very near to God, and much grace was given to her."
When left a widow, it became her chief concern to bring up her
children "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." From
their infancy she laboured to instil into their minds a sense of the
importance of eternity, particularly impressing upon them the
necessity of prayer, and teaching them to commit to memory and
understand psalms, portions of the Shorter Catechism, and of
Scripture. In a memorandum found among his papers, her
youngest son James says: "My mother died when I was very
young, I believe under six, yet I am convinced that the early
impression made on my mind by her care was never entirely
effaced ; and to this, as an eminent means in the hand of God, I
impute any serious thoughts which, in the midst of my folly
would sometimes intrude upon my mind, as well as that still
small voice of conscience which afterwards led me to see that all
below was vanity without an interest in that inheritance which
can never fade away." He adds : " I mention this more par-
ticularly because it may lead Christian parents to sow in hope the
seed of Divine truth in the minds of their children, and may
prevent their considering their efforts unavailing even where the
things which they have taught seem to have been uttered in vain.
No means of grace is, I apprehend, more, perhaps none is so much,
countenanced of God as early religious instruction." ^

* J. W. Digglp, The Lomcashire Life of Bishoj) Fraser, 231.

* The Lives of Robert and James Alexaiider Haldane, 11.

314 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

4. Without love in the home, all the parents' efforts will fail.
Love is the only atmosphere in which the spirits of little children
can grow. Without it the wisest precepts only choke, and the best-
prepared knowledge proves innutritions. It must be a large love,
a wise love, an inclusive love, such as God alone can shed abroad
in the heart. Love of that kind is very frequently found in " huts
where poor men lie," and consequently the children issuing out of
them have been better trained than those whose parents have
handed them over to loveless tutors or underlings.

^ Perhaps there is no criterion by which to estimate a
Christian's life and influence so just, so simple, so ungainsayable,
as that of the fruits of his faith and of his works in his own
family. It is a quality of virtue, as truly as it is of sin, to repro-
duce itself ! And there is no soil so favourable for the mani-
festation of a man's graces as that of his home. He is master of
the situation. His sway is almost unlimited. He can plant what
he will, and very largely destroy what displeases him. To leave
the best soil to itself is sufficient to ensure an abundant crop of
weeds. But of what use is the gardener unless he uproots and
replaces them with flowers ? This is his business. That he can,
with care, succeed, is aptly illustrated in the family history of
Mrs. Booth. She commanded her children, and insisted on their
obeying God, till obedience to His will developed into a blessed
habit. It became early easier to be holy than to be sinful, to do
good than to do evil, to sacrifice than to enjoy. The children
could not fail to imbibe the lessons learnt from the lips and lives
of their parents. There was an atmosphere of holy chivalry,
which spurred them on to generous and noble deeds.^

XL

The Child.

That childhood is the proper period for education is one of the
most obvious of all general truths. It is crystallized in the well-
known Scottish proverb —

Learn young, learn fair;
Learn auld, learn sair.

One might almost say that everything is settled by the time a
boy or girl reaches fifteen or sixteen. Most of the trials and

> F. I'.ooth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth, ii. 104.

PROVERBS XXII. 6 315

temptations, and most of the opportunities for development, still
lie ahead, but the way in which the boy or girl will meet those
temptations, and rise or fail to rise to those opportunities, is to a
large extent decided.

1. The child ought to be trained for its own sake. And there
are four things which have to be considered in this connexion.

(1) The child has a hody. It will depend much upon our
knowledge of its physical nature, and our action in regard to it,
whether the child will have a healthy life or an unhealthy one.
The foundation of many weaknesses and diseases, which the storm
and stress of after life bring out, may be laid in childhood.

^ The body should be trained for its own sake, and for its
influence higher up. It should be properly fed and cared for, and
taught to obey the laws of the body, that so health may come and
stay. It should be developed symmetrically, and trained to hard
work. A healthful, supple body is the foundation of strong
character and of skill. That is where life starts. This is begin-
ning lowest, but not beginning low. At the lowest it is high. The
body has immense influence upon mind and character, occupation
and career.^

(2) The child has a heart. We appeal to the affections. For
the training of these the early years of the life are important.
What the child will be in its affectional relations depends largely
upon these first years. The child's first school-room is its mother's
heart, and the child whose mother has a shrivelled and lifeless
affectional nature is well-nigh sure to be spoiled.

^ Passion and emotion were regarded by James MiU as forms
of madness, and the " intense " was a by-word of scorn. He
advocated the restriction of the private affections and the ex-
pansion of altruistic zeal to the utmost. He accepted the dicta
of his Utilitarian cult, that men are born alike, and that every
child's mind is a tabula rasa on which experience registers its
impressions. In harmony with Ibis conception, education was,
of course, the formative factor in determining life and shaping
character. It should begin with the dawn of consciousness and
be prosecuted without stint. How absolutely James Mill endorsed
these views is evident from the methods he adopted in training
his eldest son. There have been few more pathetic juvenile
histories than that of John Stuart Mill. The story is a strange

* S. D. Gordon, Q%iet Talks on Home Ideals, 237.

3i6 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

one ; and were it not so well substantiated, doubts as to its
accuracy would be legitimate. It has been received with feelings
of amazement, mingled with those of sympathy and indignation.
Despite the fact that his temperament was highly emotional and
even religiously inclined, he was early compelled to face life from
the purely intellectual standpoint. Before he was sufficiently
mature to register a protest, his father forced him outside the
pale of all sentiment, and charged him with the insolence of a
philosophical system which had no limitations. Such hard and
metallic treatment robbed the son of any opportunity to develop
and understand the romantic side of his nature. Many of the
sorrows that beset his career can be traced to this well-nigh
unpardonable error.^

(3) The child has a mind. Observation, perception, the first
glimmerings of reason, imagination — the lack of training in regard
to any one of these things will make a gap in the life, and it may
have serious results. We must train the whole mind, not the
intellect only.

^ You will all recollect that some time ago there was a
scandal and a great outcry about certain cutlasses and bayonets
which had been supplied to our troops and sailors. These war-
like implements were polished as bright as rubbing could make
them ; they were very well sharpened ; they looked lovely. But
when they were applied to the test of the work of war they broke
and they bent and proved more likely to hurt the hand of him
that used them than to do any harm to the enemy. Let me
apply that analogy to the effect of education, which is a sharpen-
ing and polishing of the mind. You may develop the intellectual
side of people as far as you like, and you may confer upon them
all the skill that training and instruction can give ; but, if there
is not underneath all that outside form and superficial polish, the
firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest desire to do well, your
labour is absolutely in vain.^

(4) The child has a soul. The soul is also the creature of
habit. The soul learns its habits even as the body and the mind
acquire theirs, by use and practice. The habit of living without
God is one which may be learned by the child. It is one of the
easiest of all habits to acquire. Unlike some other habits, it
demands no exertion and no self-denial. But there is another, an
opposite, habit of the soul, that of living to God, with God, and in

* S. P. Cad man, Cliarles Darwin and Other English Thinkers, 94.
» T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays, iii. 445.

PROVERBS XXII. 6 317

God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the
other, yet hke it formed by a succession of acts, each easier than
the last, and each making the next easier still.

^ He that has made a leap to-day can more easily make the
same leap to-morrow ; and he will make a longer or higher leap
soon, perhaps the day after. His muscles are stretched, and are
also strengthened. This we call practice. From it comes a
certain state of the body. So from practice in good or evil comes
a certain state of the mind. This is called habit : and it tends to
the doing again with more ease what we have already done with
less. The thought of that mighty engine ! never slumbering, ever
working : self-feeding, self-acting : powerful and awful servant of
God who ordained it: powerful and restless, too, alike for the
destruction and for the salvation of souls. What we do without
habit we do because it pleases at the time. But what we do by
habit we do even though it pleases little or not at all at the time.
Place habit, then, on the side of religion. You cannot depend
upon your tastes and feelings towards Divine things to be
uniform : lay hold upon an instrument which will carry you over
their inequalities, and keep you in the honest practice of your
spiritual exercises, when but for this they would have been
intermitted.^

2. The child ought to be trained for national reasons. The
true riches of a country lie in its manhood, and the child is
manhood in the germ. The promise of the future is in our
children. We hear that to keep up an army and navy, to
prosecute wars here and there, is necessary to open and keep open
markets, and push trade. We are told that trade follows the
flag, and that the Union Jack is a commercial asset. There is a
more valuable commercial asset that we are in danger of ignoring
— the child.

^ There is a story told of a procession in an ancient city.
The old veterans, whose days were drawing to a close, but who
had spent years in the service of their nation, walked first. They
were led by a man bearing aloft the motto, "We have been
brave." They were followed by those in active service, the
manhood of the people, who bore the motto, "We are brave."
The rear was brought up by the youths and lads, who bore aloft
this inscription, " We will be brave." ^

^ Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ii. 419.
« J. W. Clayton, TJie Genius of God, 55.

3i8 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

III.

The Education of the Child.

For the word here, chanok, translated " train up," there are
two root meanings, the one " to make narrow," the other " to put
into the mouth for taste and nutrition." Instruction compre-
hends both conceptions : (1) making narrow, i.e., restraint of all
wayward courses, repression of selfish desires and unruly passions ;
(2) the imparting of sound intellectual nourishment with a view
to the growth and vigour of man's higher life.

1. Let us consider first of all the idea of restraint — the
negative side of this question of education. We know that weak
and sentimental nature which shrinks from inflicting pain under
any circumstances. Seizing on the ill-understood doctrine that
love is the sovereign power in life and in education, it pleads in
the name of love that the offender may be spared, that he may
escape the due penalty of his fault. That is not a love like God's
love.

Our Heavenly Father chastens His children ; by most gracious
punishments He brings home to them the sense of sin, and leads
them to repentance and amendment. And earthly parents, in
proportion as they are led by the Spirit and filled with love, will
correct their children, not for their own pleasure, but for their
children's good. The truth which underlies these apparently
harsh injunctions is this : Love inflicts punishments, nor are any
punishments so severe as those which love inflicts ; and only the
punishments which love inflicts are able to reform and to save
the character of the delinquent.

^ One of the child's main objects in life seems to be imposing
its own will on those about it, and this will which the child is
always contending for is the merest caprice, and formed no grown-
up person can say why. Without experience one could hardly
believe what a constant warfare the child wages in getting its
own way. That the way of the grown-up person may conceivably
be better never comes into the child's head. The child feels the
grown person to be stronger, and it learns to submit without the
least show of resistance, just as we submit to the weather. But
the judicious, loving elder does not like to be always opposing,

PROVERBS XXII. 6 319

and is afraid of crushing the child's free action, so we naturally
let the child have its way wherever we can. Then we come to
a point where the child's will would cause great inconvenience,
perhaps risks that cannot be faced. Then comes the tug. If the
child is not coaxed to attend to something else, it sets up a howl
and makes itself almost intolerable. Our children have never
gained anything in this way, and they mostly understand when
they have pushed their own will as far as they will be allowed,
but at times they turn " naughty," and the childish " I shan't ! "
has to be met hy force majeure}

2. But education has also a positive side. Wise penalties and
" reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself causeth shame
to his mother." The child must not be left to himself. The
parent must bring home to his child's heart those truths of
experience which the child cannot at present know. He must
train the child with a view to the growth and vigour of man's
higher life. How is he to set about this task ?

(1) By wise observation. — Children are born to go different
ways. The master in a menagerie trains each animal according
to its nature. He does not try to make a falcon swim, or a fish
fly, or an otter climb. But the distinctions between children are
no less radical, and are far more subtle and difficult to discern.
Parents should remember that because they have succeeded with
one child they are in danger of failing with another. They think
they have only to cast each child into the same candle mould
which shaped their first so well. If men would observe their
children, upon whose welfare their most precious hopes depend,
with half the judicious care they have bestowed upon beasts and
birds and fishes and insects, great would be their reward.

^ The motherly love of the penguin which smothers its
offspring was not hers. She saw that mistaken concern illustrated
in many a household which was a model of motherly care in the
eyes of a blind world. The result of leading-strings and culture
under glass was a feeble manhood and a silly womanhood, was
failure of the most dire and dreadful kind. Her little folks were
treasures given to her to guard and protect, not to mould into
her own image. They had personalities of their own, and
inheritances of their own. They were individuals not appendages,
and it was her duty, she thought, to enrich them by teaching
^ Life and Remains of the Hev. B. H. Quick, 300.

320 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

them how to use their own talents and faculties. Hers was to
provide an atmosphere for them to breathe, a purity for them to
feel, a liberty for them to employ. She seemed to say : " I am at
hand to hold and to help you if necessary, but I want you to develop
your own little selves so that when you are men and women you
will be persons of a free will and not creatures of circumstance."
She believed in discipline, but not the discipline of force, not the
bowing to an outside order which imposed itself by punishment,
but the discipline of spiritual desire, of reasoned conduct, of
moral control of emotion and appetite. The words she used in a
sentence in the letter she wrote telling her children that their
grandmother had died were very significant, " We must try to
comfort each other." ^

(2) By good instruction, — A character which is not built up on
the basis of truth, and in which there are not deep and strong
convictions of truth, will seldom stand the test of this world, and
most assuredly will not stand the test of the next. Truth is as
much the natural staff of life for the soul as bread is for the body.
It cannot be strong and healthy without it. Ignorance is the
starvation of the soul ; error is its poison ; truth is its food and
healing medicine,

^ You are bound to initiate your children, not merely to the
joys and desires of life, but to life itself ; to its duties, and to its
moral Law of Government. Few mothers, few fathers, in this
irreligious age — and even especially in the wealthier classes —
understand the true gravity of their educational mission. Few
mothers, few fathers, remember that the numerous victims, the
incessant struggles, and the lifelong martyrdom of our day, are in
a great measure the fruit of the egotism, instilled thirty years back
by the weak mothers and heedless fathers who allowed their
children to accustom themselves to regard life, not as a mission
and a duty, but as a search after happiness, and a study of their
own well-being.2

(a) God. — It cannot be inculcated with too much force and
frequency that the very highest truths are those which should be
imparted at the earliest possible period in a child's history. It is
important that as soon as the laws of a child's mind can admit the
thought, it should be taught concerning Him who made it and
all things, and who rules in heaven and on earth.

* J. Ramsay MacDouald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, 130.
^ Life and Writings of Josc^ih Mazzini, iv. 287.

PROVERBS XXII. 6 321

^ A child takes in nothing more easily than the thought of
One who made the flowers of the earth and the stars of the sky ;
and as it early comes to know what is meant by love to its
parents, it may easily be taught to know what is meant by love
to God.i

(h) Christ. — If we are in the wrong way, the more vigorously
we prosecute the journey the sooner will disaster come. If we
do not train children in truth and righteousness, it would be
better that we should not train them at all, Christ is the truth,
and the Scriptures the standard by which truth may be known.
This is not only religiously the best solution of the question, but
philosophically the only solution that can be given.

^ I have no right to pray for my children unless I am, by my
lips and by my life, labouring ceaselessly to lead them to the
Saviour's feet. " Wherefore criest thou unto me ? Speak ye to
the children ! " I never read that text without thinking of
Susanna Wesley. Was there ever a mother like that mother of
the Wesleys ? One night she had been praying for her great
family. "At last," she says, "it came into my mind that I
might do more than I do. I resolved to begin. I will take such
proportion of time as I can best spare every night to discourse
with each child by itself." How Susanna Wesley kept that good
resolution, and with what tremendous and earth-shaking results,
the whole world very well knows.^

(c) The Bible.— If we do not adopt the Bible as our standard
in training the young, moral training is impossible. If in moral
principles every man is his own lawgiver, there is no law at all,
and no authority. You may train a fruit-tree by nailing its
branches to a wall, or by tying them to an espalier railing ; but the
tree whose branches have nothing to lean on but air is not trained
at all. It is not a dispute between the Scriptures and some other
rival standard, for no such standard exists or is proposed. It is a
question between the Bible as a standard, and no standard at all.

^ With all my heart I believe that the best basis for education,
with which no other documents, catechetical or otherwise, can be
compared, is the Holy Scriptures. I should deplore, with more
sorrow than I can express, if the time should ever come when
these sacred Scriptures — the most simple, as they are the highest
literature in the world, the most fitted to instil goodness into the

1 E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment, 63.
' F. W. Boieharu, Mountains in tfie Mist, 251,
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 21

322 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

mind of the child, as they are the most fitted to inspire all noble-
ness and piety and charity in the heart of man, — I should deplore
if the time ever came when the reading and teaching of these
Scriptures should form no longer a part of our common educa-
tional system. I believe absolutely in the power of the teacher
to read and explain the Holy Scriptures without any sectarian
admixture. I believe that all that has been said on this point
is simply theory, and that practically there is no difficulty.
Sectarianism ! why the whole spirit of the Bible is opposed to
sectarianism. Its living study, its simple reading, are the best
correction of sectarianism ; and our Churches, one and all, are
only sectarian in so far as they have departed from the Bible and
thrown it aside.^

(3) By a good example. — Good instruction is sunlight, but it will
not of itself develop and mature a godly life. Children are far
less influenced by precept than by example, and it is often the
saddest feature in home training that there is so glaring a
disparity between the instructions of parents and their own
visible and unmistakable life. Our lives are the forces which are
in most constant operation upon the minds and hearts of our
children. Our character is a stream, a river flowing down upon
our children hour by hour. What we do here and there to carry
an opposing influence is, at best, only a ripple that we make on
the surface of the stream; it reveals the sweep of the current,
nothing more. If we expect our children to go with the ripple
instead of the stream we shall be disappointed.

^ Example is one of the most important of instructors, though
it teaches without a tongue. Precept may point the way, but
it is silent, continuous example, conveyed to us by habits and
living with us, that carries us along. Good advice has its weight,
but without the accompaniment of a good example it is of com-
paratively small influence : and it will be found that the common
saying of " Do as I say, not as I do," is usually reversed in the
actual experience of life. All persons are more apt to learn
through the eye rather than the ear, and whatever is seen in fact
makes a deeper impression than anything that is read or heard.
This is especially the case in early life, when the eye is the chief
inlet of knowledge. Whatever children see they unconsciously
imitate, and they insensibly become like to those who are about
them. Hence the importance of domestic training. For, however
efficient our schools, the examples set in our homes must always

* Principal TuUoch, in Memoir, by Mrs. Oliphant, 266.

PROVERBS XXII. 6 323

be of greater injfluence in forming the characters of our future
men and women; and from that source, be it pure or tainted,
issue the habits and principles which govern public as well as
private life. From this central spot the human sympathies
radiate to an ever- widening circle until the world is embraced :
for though true philanthropy, like charity, begins ' at home,
assuredly it does not end there.^

3. This training is indeed a work of watchful anxiety, attended
with painful, and often long-protracted, exercise of faith and
patience. Who can hold on to it, but for the Divine support of
the parental promise — " When he is old he shall not depart from
it " ? The man will be as the child is trained. Education is
utterly distinct from grace. But when conducted in the spirit,
and on the principles, of the Word of God, it is a means of
imparting it. Sometimes the fruit is immediate, uniform, and
permanent. But in many cases " the bread cast upon the
waters of the covenant is found," not till "after many days,"
perhaps not till the godly parent has been laid in the grave.
Yet the fruit, though late, will be not the less sure.

^ In the year 1746, on a small island lying off the western
coast of Africa, there might be seen a young man of English birth
living in a condition of the most abject misery. He was the
servant, it might almost be said the slave, of a trafficker in human
flesh, who was himself, through his vile lusts, under the bondage
of a ferocious negress, by whom his establishment was ruled.
Against the English youth her heart was specially set. She
starved him ; she caused him to be unjustly beaten ; she instigated
his master against him by false accusations; she refused him
when burning with fever even a draught of cold water. Such
was the barbarity to which she subjected him that, but for a
naturally strong constitution, and the secret assistance of some of
the poor slaves of the household, he must have perished. What
had brought this youth, who was the son of respectable parents
and who had received a good education in his native country, to
this deplorable condition ? It was chiefly his own wickedness,
recklessness, and folly. He had been a wild, ungovernable youth,
and had plunged himself into such an abyss of evil that his
friends felt it was hopeless to strive to save him, and so they left
him to sink. Who that saw that youth in his misery and his
wickedness could have believed it possible that ere many years
» S. Smiles, Self-Hdy.

324 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN

had passed he should be one of the most influential clergymen in
the British Metropolis, a man of devout piety and zeal for God, a
man loved, respected, looked up to by the whole religious world
of his day, a man who should leave the stamp of his goodness on
the nation at large ? And yet all that and more came to pass.
The youth was John Newton, the friend of Cowper, the author
along with him of the Olney Hymns, and the most venerable
name among the Evangelical clergy of the Church of England.
And to what did John Newton owe his rescue from the terrible
pit into which he had fallen ? His mother had died when he was
only six years of age, and had been spared the misery of witness-
ing his career of vice, folly, degradation. But she was a godly
woman, and during these six years she had stored his mind with
Divine truth, and her earnest prayers for him had gone up for a
memorial before God. These early lessons, he himself records, he
never could get rid of, even during the wildest part of his career.
Do what he would there they were, stamped indelibly on his soul,
and ever and anon they would thrust themselves upon his notice.
And when at length his heart was softened, and his spirit bowed
to seek the Lord, the words spoken by that gentle mother in the
nursery, long years before, came sounding in his ears again, as
words of power, and life, and purity.^

* W. Lindsay Alexandei', Christian Thought and fVork, 268.

The Buying and Selling of the Truth.

SM

Literature.

Farindon (A.), Sermons, ii. 373.

Greenhough (J. G.), in Great Texts of the Old Testament, 19.

Gregg (J.), Sermons and Lectures, 67.

James (F. H.), in Voysey's Sermons, xv. (1892), No. 42.

Jeffrey (J.), The Woaj of Life, 252.

Moody (A.), Buy the Truth, 11.

Neale (J. M.), Sermons for Children, 15.

Smellie (A.), In the Hour of Silence, 81.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xii. (1876), No. 967.

„ „ Sermons to Children, v. 160.
Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 9.
Warschauer (J.), The Way of Understanding, 88.
Christian World Pulpit, Ixxiv. 133 (E. J. Miller); Ixxxiv. 145 (W. B.

Carpenter).

3.6

The Buying and Selling of the Truth.

Buy the truth, and sell it not;

Yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.— Prov. xxiii. 23.

1. " Buy the truth, and sell it not." Wedged in between warnings
against the evil effects that attend gluttony and drunkenness
come these startling words, a ray of sheer idealism, which lights
up the whole page. Here are no calculations of profit as it is
understood in the market-place and the counting-house ; here is
no commendation of virtue on the ground that experience shows
it to pay better in the long run than its opposite, nor the spirit
which declares honesty to be the best policy, — a maxim which
might have been penned by any convicted pickpocket, — but truth
is praised for its own sake as a supreme possession, to be acquired
and not to be parted with on any consideration ; it is like that
pearl of great price which a merchant found, and in exchange for
which he gave all that he had.

2. Shakespeare has told us that " all the world's a stage, and
all the men and women merely players." It would have been much
more true to say that all the world is a market, and all the men
and women buyers and sellers. Every day is a market-day, and
every evening brings its balance-sheet to us : things bought and
things sold, with the net gain, or, it may be, loss. Foolish people
are always selling the better things for the worse ; while the wise
buy the more precious and enduring things, at the cost of that
which they can more easily part with. The foolish sell the
substance for the shadow, and the wise sell the shadow for the
substance ; that is the main difference between the two.

3»7

328 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

I,

A Thing of Value.

" The Truth."

" Buy the truth, and sell it not ; yea, wisdom, and instruction,
and understanding," The second clause gives the sphere in which
truth moves, or the three properties which appertain to it. These
are : wisdom, practical knowledge ; instruction, moral culture and
discipline ; and understanding, the faculty of discernment.

1. First, then, the treasure set before us here as worth obtain-
ing is the truth. The truth has a perpetual charm for every soul
that is true. Over all souls she wields a mystic power ; all must
bow to her authority, whether they love her or not. She has a
Divine right to command, to direct, to judge, to condemn and to
acquit. She is the only possessor of such a right. There is,
indeed, no authority that can make itself felt by man save that
which comes to him in the guise of truth. The truth is not
merely intellectual but moral and practical as well. To seek
truth wherever she may be found, to follow truth wherever she
leads, to do truth whatever the consequences, may be said to sum
up the whole duty of man. Therefore, " whatsoever things are
true " may well be the primary subjects of our thought and medi-
tation and practice.

•(I Let no promise of reward, however great, tempt you from
that generous and uncalculating loyalty to truth which holds that
any sacrifice made on its altar is worth making, that nothing
which is purchased at the cost of truth is worth the prize. If you
are called to the office of a teacher or preacher of truth — and what
vocation can be higher ? — see that it is the truth as you yourself
have learned to see it, and not somebody else's truth, that you give
your fellows. The secret of success in the communication of truth,
as in all true success in life, is to be yourself, as the secret of
failure is concealment and repression of one's own selfhood — the
seeming to be what one is not. The life of imitation, as Plato
said, is the life of evil. The good life, the true life, is always
original. Such fidelity to truth you will find to be its own reward,
as unfaithfulness is its own penalty. To sell the truth is to arrest
the movement of your intellectual life, to kill the faculty of further

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 329

insight. To cherish the truth you know is to keep the eyes of your
mind open to the larger vision of truth which the future has in
store for you, to remain a seeker, and therefore a finder, of truth
in all the days to come. Be loyal to your convictions, at whatever
cost ; beware of disloyalty to truth.^

2. There are three kinds of truth. That is to say, truth is to
be sought in three different spheres of life.

(1) First there is civil truth, which exists and prevails in all
the civil business of society — the truth which man speaks to man :
" Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his
neighbour." This is the truth that is so highly thought of, and so
valued, both in public and in private life, as it is so indispensable
to the due discharge of the duties of life ; and so great is con-
sidered the insult of affixing upon man the imputation of speaking
contrary to truth that life is often risked to repel the charge ; and
not only that, but is frequently sacrificed to wipe away the stain.
This does not seem to be the truth spoken of in the text, although,
perhaps, it is part of it. It extends from it, as the branch from
the tree ; it flows from it, as the streamlet from the fountain ; but
it is not altogether it.

^ Truth is the very bond of society, without which it must
cease to exist, and dissolve into anarchy and chaos. A household
cannot be governed by lying ; nor can a nation. Sir Thomas
Browne once was asked, " Do the devils lie ? " " No," was his
answer ; " for then even hell could not subsist." No considera-
tions can justify the sacrifice of truth, which ought to be sovereign
in all the relations of life. Of all mean vices, perhaps lying is the
meanest. It is in some cases the offspring of perversity and vice,
and in many others of sheer moral cowardice. There was no virtue
that Dr. Arnold of Rugby laboured more sedulously to instil into
young men than the virtue of truthfulness, as being the manliest
of virtues, as indeed the very basis of all true manliness. He
designated truthfulness as " moral transparency," and he valued it
more highly than any other quality. When lying was detected,
he treated it as a great moral offence ; but when a pupil made an
assertion, he accepted it with confidence. " If you say so, that is
quite enough ; of course I believe your word." By thus trusting
and believing them, he educated the young in truthfulness ; the
boys at length coming to say to one another : " It's a shame to
tell Arnold a lie — he always believes one." ^

^ J. Seth, Oraduation Address to Students. * S. Smiles, Character, 206.

330 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

(2) There is a second kind of truth — philosophical truth, or an
inquiry into the causes of nature, which is drawn and gathered
from observation of the works of God, and which those who rank
high in the learned world aim at possessing to such an extent that
in quest of it they spare neither trouble, time, toil, nor expense.
They sail to foreign climes, traverse distant lands —

Scorn delights, and live laborious days;

but if the discoveries which they make be found, on experiment, to
be contrary to truth, then they are constrained to suffer a sort of de-
gradation in their character, as men of literature and science, and to
come down from the elevated station which they had occupied before.
This does not, either, seem to be the truth spoken of in the text.

^ What is there within the circle of human possessions which
has had its value so extolled by the most gifted of men as Truth ?
There is an admitted nobility in the love of it, a high distinction
in the search for it. To admit this is to acknowledge the import-
ance of science and philosophy ; and from the exceeding worth of
truth philosophy receives its high distinction. However labori-
ously and cautiously reached, philosophic doctrines are of no value
except in so far as they are capable of being verified. There are
no dogmas, whether scientific, philosophic, or theologic, which have
a right to live on any other condition than the acknowledgment
of their truth. Popular error holds its place only on account of
the absence of scientific criticism, which is the expression of intel-
lectual activity. The strength, beauty, and value of truth are
most clearly recognized when all society is stirred to interest in
the whole range of inquiry, and in the critical testing of dogmas
of all sorts. The love of truth is the true philosophic spirit;
search after it is the philosopher's task.^

(3) There is a third kind of truth, — moral or spiritual truth, —
the truth which regards God as a Sovereign, and man as an im-
mortal, accountable being ; " the truth as it is in Jesus," which
truth is gathered in all its fulness, purity, and excellence, only
from the Scriptures, the Word of God.

^ The truth here meant is that which St. Augustine calleth
legevi omnium artium, et artem omnipotentis Artificis, " a law to
direct all arts, an art taught by Wisdom itself, by the Maker of
all things." It teacheth us to love God with all our hearts, to
believe in Him, and to lead upright lives. It killeth in us the

* Henry Calderwood.

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 331

root of sin, it extinguisheth all lusts, it maketh us tread under
foot pleasure and honour and wealth ; it rendereth us deaf to the
noise of this busy world, and blind to that glaring pomp which
dazzleth the eyes of others. Hdc prceeunte seculi fiuctus calcamus :
" It goeth before us in our way, and through all the surges of
this present world" it bringeth us to the vision and fruition
of Him who is Truth itself.^

^ Phillips Brooks refused to give the intellect in man the
supremacy when taken by itself. In speaking of the Person of
Christ, he asks the questions: How does Christ compare in in-
tellectual power with other men ? How did He estimate the
intellect ? Was His intellect sufficient to account for the unique
position He holds in the world's history as the mightiest force
that has controlled the development of humanity ? He finds the
answer by turning to the Fourth Gospel, which gives us most
that we know about the mind of Jesus. It is the intellectual
Gospel, because there is one constantly recurring word — " truth,"
which is distinctly a word of the intellect. But in the Fourth
Gospel, in every instance, it is employed in a sense different from
that of the schools. In its scholastic use it is detached from life
and made synonymous with knowledge. But knowledge is no
word of Jesus. With information for the head alone, detached
from its relations to the whole nature, Jesus has no concern.
Truth was something which set the whole man free. It was a
moral thing, for he who does not receive it is not merely a
doubter, but a liar. Truth was something which a man could be,
not merely something which a man could study and measure by
walking around it on the outside. The objective and the subjective
lose themselves in each other. Truth can be known only from
the inside; it is something moral, something living, something
spiritual. It is not mere objective unity ; it must have in it the
elements of character. "To this end was I born," says Jesus,
" and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear
witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my
voice. 2

II.

The Way to Obtain It.

" Buy the Truth."

The truth cannot be purchased with money. The highest
things are not marketable ; they are like the wine and milk of

^ A. Farindon, Sermons, ii. 379.

^ A. V. G. Allen, Phillips Brooks : Memories of His Life, 321.

332 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

which Isaiah wrote — " without money and without price." The
power of money, though enormously great, is limited, and does
not yet control the whole field human and Divine. You cannot
buy brains and genius, however much money you have ; or the
poet's vision, the artist's touch, the ear for music, the gift of
song. You cannot buy a good name, a stainless reputation, an
easy conscience, or a pair of honest eyes. You cannot buy a big
manly heart, or the faith of a little child. You cannot buy
happiness ; above all things, it runs away from the possessor of
millions. You cannot buy a good man's trust or a good woman's
love ; still less can you buy self-respect, or the right to pray, or
a place in Christ's living Church and the inheritance of His
saints.

^ All the best things are given away. Do we realize what a
ghost and travesty of possession lurks in the act of purchase ?
You can buy a book of poems : the soft bindings are yours, the
gilt edges are yours, the hand-made paper is yours, but not the
poetry. No man was ever rich enough to buy a poem. If it is
his, he must have it as the unpurchasable gift of God to his
soul. And as surely as you cannot buy a poem, so you cannot
buy a home, or a happy hour, or a good conscience, or a rich
hope. Trite old story, yes, but we must go on telling it till the
vital truth it implies has fashioned the practices of the world.
And it can, for the positive side of this teaching is the doctrine
of grace — God's mercy for the undeserving, His treasure for the
poor. His fulness for the empty. The wealth of our lives is the
love that brings the vision beautiful and welds men heart to
heart, the sympathy that gives insight, the faith and hope that
enrich the spirit, the morning joy of Jesus in the souls of them
that crown Him and the lives of them that serve Him.^

1. In one aspect the truth is always seeking to reach us. All
truth is of the nature of revelation. But just as there must be
eyes formed to behold the objects in the world around us, so
there must be an inner eye that looks out for and seeks to read
the revelation. The revelation is not wholly in the objects, but
also in what they indicate. Science describes the objects, but the
mind seeks the truth that they reveal. Sometimes the truth
comes to us, dawns upon us, shines on us, without any conscious
effort of our own or immediate seeking on our part:
* P. C. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, 56.

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 333

Think ye 'mid all this mighty sum

Of things for ever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,

But we must still be seeking?

This is intuition ; but it does not come miraculously ; there has
been a long preparation for it in the race and often also in the
individual.

^ A modern philosophical writer (Eucken), with much know-
ledge of past endeavours after the truth, tells us that we must
seek it in a new way. We must seek it, primarily, not without
but within ourselves, not as a matter of the intellect merely, or of
any one or more faculties alone, but of the life, as something
belonging to a higher and wider Life which is seeking to realize
itself in us. No doubt what is thus said is true. But it implies
a distinction or contrast between the actual and the ideal, and
that there is a faculty in man capable of perceiving the ideal. In
what other way could we possibly know what the higher and
wider Life moves us to ? The ideal, however, is not a mere
intellectual perception ; there is also a sense or feeling of what
is true and good, and an attraction that draws us upward towards
itself. That there is a higher Life seeking to live in us, Christianity
also teaches.^

^ One of the most interesting parts of the Pilgrim's Progress
is that in which Christian and Faithful come to Vanity Fair,
crowded with merry people, all engaged in buying trifles. " That
which did not a little amuse the merchants was that these pilgrims
set very light by their wares, they cared not so much as to look
upon them : and if they called upon them to buy, they would put
their fingers in their ears and cry, ' Turn away mine eyes from
beholding vanity.' One chanced mockingly, beholding the carriage
of the men, to say unto them, ' What will ye buy ? ' But they,
looking gravely upon him, said, ' We buy the truth.' " ^

2. What is meant, then, by saying that the truth has to be
bought — " Buy the truth, and sell it not ; yea, wisdom, and
instruction, and understanding " ? The highest things have to be
bought, not with money — indeed, they are above price ; but you
cannot have them without cost, expenditure, sacrifice. To buy is
to give up something that you value in exchange for something that
you desire more, covet more, and perhaps need more. It is right,
1 W. L. Walker, The True Christ, 18. ^ j_ Jeffrey, The Way of Life, 254.

334 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

then, to say that all good and Divine things must be bought.
Our great Master likened the Kingdom of Heaven to a merchant-
man seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of
great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. And
the Apostle Paul, quite in the spirit of that parable, declared that
he had suffered the loss of all things to win Christ — that is, he
had sold all the other things to buy Christ, and got Him cheap at
that sacrifice.

(1) We have all to buy what this writer calls wisdom, for it
can be gained only in the school of experience, and the fees in
that school are high. Wisdom is never inherited, never bequeathed
or transmitted from father to son. Everyone has to buy it for
himself in a dear market. This writer, in the preceding verse,
counts the father happy who begetteth a wise child ; but that is
impossible. His child may grow up into a wise man, but he is
never born wise. A man may be born clever, talented, a genius,
a poet ; he may be born rich, heir to an estate, a title, or a throne ;
but he is never born wise. He has to buy wisdom at a big price.
Some of our young people may be a great deal smarter than their
fathers, much more up-to-date, as they say, and, by virtue of their
superior education, far more knowing in book matters. But they
cannot, in the nature of things, be quite as wise as their fathers,
unless, indeed, the fathers are mentally deficient ; and even then,
there is at least a probability that the sons will take after them ;
because wisdom can be acquired only in the rough and painful
school of experience. The buying of wisdom writes wrinkles
and furrows on our faces, and heavy lines of care on our poor
hearts. We buy wisdom with many a rebuff, humbling, and
disappointment, with costly blunders and heartache, sad hours,
and sometimes a bit of heart-break. We are buying wisdom all
our lives, and often it comes to us only as the end approaches.
That is the pathos of life. We often wish that we could have the
wisdom sooner, before the twilight creeps on. It would make
our lives so much happier and more useful ; but it comes only in
time to use the greater part of it in the higher service, where, no
doubt, it will be needed. Well might this writer say: "Buy
wisdom." We have all to buy it.

^ On November 15, Principal Tulloch gave his opening lecture
at St. Mary's College. My record of the day says " really very

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 335

splendid." These brilliant addresses were discourses on some
ecclesiastical or theological topic, which had become matter of
current interest. And a few days after they had been read in St.
Mary's College, you might often find them in some Eeview or
Magazine. But they were always stimulating : as the prelections
of a humdrum professor never could be. And a special pathos was
sometimes in them, if Tulloch was at the time in one of those
dark moods of which Mrs. Oliphant's biography most truly tells.
Well I remember the audible hush, once, when the Principal
looked up from his lecture (he always sat to lecture) and said, as
last words, " Gentlemen, you will not fully understand these
things till you have been taught them by experience or till your
lot has been plowed by the furrows of sorrow." Somehow, what
Tulloch said always got home wonderfully. Adaptation was
perfect.^

(2) It is equally certain that we have to buy character,
reputation, and an honoured and trusted name. There is no
market in the world where these can be picked up cheap. You
can buy a tawdry reputation, a short-lived popularity or notoriety,
at a very costless price, just as you can buy sham jewels for a
few coppers from any pedlar in the streets. But to win a name
which will keep its white, stainless honour through the wear and
tear of years ; to win the enduring respect of good men (and there
is no other respect worth a straw) ; to win the daily and the final
" Well done " of the Great Judge — that is never a costless
business. It means the persistent climbing of the rugged hill of
duty ; it means the daily fight with temptation ; the daily treading
down of self-indulgent ease ; the daily sacrifice in the service of
friends and fellow-men; and the constant plodding on in the
straight path, swerving not to right or left through evil repute
and good. If we cannot face that music and endure that discipline,
we shall never win the prize. The good and honoured name does
not drop into our lap as a gift of fortune. It must be dearly
bought.

^ Turn your energies towards your moral cultivation. In
doing so you will accumulate imperishable riches. All that your
worldly care can bring will be the doubtful possession of riches
of doubtful value. In the possession of the moral wealth of a
noble and disciplined character, you possess that which can
neither wither nor be stolen. What we have we must leave at

^ A. K. H. Boyd, Twenty-Five Years of St. Andrews, i. 126.

336 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

the threshold of the grave. What we are goes with us into the
other world. Eiches will drop from our dying hand into the
grasp of others. Character passes with us into the presence of
God. Character is everything. This, rather than worldly riches,
is the true end of life. The perfecting of this is the true purpose
of God in life.^

(3) We must also buy the higher and richer experiences of the
Christian life. Some people talk smoothly, and even glibly, about
the life of holiness, the " higher life," as if it could be reached
easily by a simple act of trust. It is not to be attained in that
way. It means sacrifice. The higher life always means giving
up things we like and love for the sake of God and our fellow-
men. The religion which costs us nothing in time, thought,
labour, or money, is not worth picking up in the streets. Most
people pay as much for their religion as it is worth, especially if
they pay very little, because in that case it is worth so little.
The Bible cannot be God's book to us, full of rich teaching and
comfort, unless we take the trouble to read it often and prayer-
fully. We cannot understand the helpfulness and mighty power
of prayer unless we steal time from our manifold engagements, to
commune with God in prayer. We cannot enjoy the communion
of saints unless we sacrifice our petty prides, snobberies, and
mighty regard for class-distinctions. We cannot realize the
sweets of Divine forgiveness unless we renounce our grudges, un-
reasonable dislikes, and our own unwillingness to forgive; and
we cannot have Christ as our Companion and Comforter unless
every day we try to do not our own will but His. Every advance
towards the higher life involves sacrifice. It costs nothing to
descend ; it is always costly to ascend.

^ " Never fear to let go," he says in his philosophical notes ;
" It is the only means of getting better things, — self-sacrifice. Let
go ; let go ; we are sure to get back again. How science teaches
the lesson of morals, which is ever. Give up, give up ; deny your-
self,— not this everlasting getting ; deny yourself, and give, and
infinitely more shall be yours; but give — not bargaining; give
from love, because you must. And if the question will intrude,
' What shall I have, if I give up this ? ' relegate that question
to faith, and answer, ' I shall have God. In my giving, in my
love, God, who is Love, gives Himself to me.' " *

1 Bishop W. Boyd Carpenter. ' Life and Letters o/ Jamet Hinton, 206.

PROVERBS xxiii. 23 337

3. The price we have to pay often amounts to the heart's
blood. It is not only truth in the sense of knowledge that we
want, but, above all, truth, in action, in our relationships to each
other, in our relation to God ; and for such truth we pay no less
a price than life itself — not by laying it down in one act of re-
nunciation, but by making it one continuous act of dedication.
We must practise what is by no means easy — an entire and
resolute candour with ourselves, a strict scrutiny of our own
motives ; we must exercise an untiring watchfulness over the
springs of conduct ; we must, in one word, buy the truth by being
true in thought and word and deed. Right opinions are very
good and are worth having, but right opinions by themselves have
never yet saved a soul. We do not buy saving truth by paying
a stipulated amount across a celestial counter once, and then
carrying it away with us ; we have to keep on paying, day by
day, hour by hour, and the price is nothing less than life — gentle,
upright, courageous, equitable, dutiful, generous, forgiving. That
alone is the true life, and we have not only to know the truth,
but to live it.

^ There is no story of modern times that shows such a per-
fect blending of courage, serenity, and self-consecration to truth
as the life of Bishop Colenso, the pioneer of the scientific study of
the Old Testament in the English-speaking world. He had every-
thing to gain by keeping his unorthodox conclusions to himself,
and everything to lose by making them public ; he had, after all,
only to keep quiet on this one topic, full as his life was of other
interests ; but I do not think it ever occurred to him to shield
himself or to save his career in the Church by cowardly silence.
You remember his own account of the circumstances which first
turned his mind to Old Testament criticism : " While translating
the story of the Flood, I have had a simple-minded but intelligent
native look up and ask, ' Is all that true ? Do you really believe
that all this happened so — that all the beasts and birds and
creeping things upon the earth, large and small, from hot countries
and cold, came thus by pairs and entered into the ark with Noah ?
And did Noah gather food for them all, for the beasts and birds
of prey, as well as for the rest ? ' My heart answered in the
words of the prophet, ' Shall a man speak lies in the name of the
Lord ? ' I dared not do so." Reckless and malicious attacks,
virtual deposition from his office, a general boycott followed, but
could not deter him from following along the path he believed,

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 2 2

338 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

and rightly believed, to be the true one. "I trust," he wrote,
" that I duly reverence both the Church and the Bible. But the
truth is above both " ; and the one thing that pained him was to
see how little love of truth there was among those from whom he
had hoped most. Well, he bore the obloquy, the isolation, the
loss inflicted upon him by bigotry, and to-day the views for which
he suffered are those of educated people everywhere ; but it was
he and such as he who paid the price of truth, and the least we
can do is to cherish the possessions they bought at such a cost.^

III.

The Folly of Bartering It.

♦' Sell it not."

What does selling the truth mean ? It means giving up that
which we know to be right for some pleasure or advantage in this
world. Every temptation is a persuasion to sell the truth. The
devil says, If you will give up this or that good habit or good
resolution, I will give you this or that pleasure. Moses, when he
was come to years, chose " rather to suffer affliction with the
people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ;
esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures
in Egypt."

^ When Ahab came to Naboth to procure from him his vine-
yard, " Give me," saith he, " thy vineyard, and I will give thee for
it a better vineyard than it ; or I will give thee the worth of it in
money " (1 Kings xxi. 2). See here three mighty tempters —
the king, money, and commodity ; whereof which is the strongest,
it is hard to determine : the weakest of them prevaileth with
most men. Notwithstanding, Naboth holdeth out against them
all : " The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of
my fathers unto thee." ^

1. It is hard to buy the truth, and easy to sell it. It is always
easy to sell the best and highest things. In the ordinary market
the rule is the other way : it is easy to buy, and hard to sell.
Everybody welcomes the buyer and meets him with respectful

* J. Wai'schauer, The Way of Understanding, 97.

• A. Farindon, Sermons, ii. 43L

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 339

salutes; but the seller is often sent off with a churlish "No."
In the moral and spiritual market, however, it is hard to buy
and easy to sell. There are always numerous buyers bidding
against each other in their eagerness to buy what we are prepared
to sell. It is easy to sell one's spiritual birthright for a morsel of
meat. There are scores of Jacobs lying in wait ready to help us
to that transaction. It is easy to sell our principles and convictions
for some paltry bribe, some pecuniary or social advantage. It is
easy to sell our veracity or our honesty, to make people think more
highly of us, or to secure additional gain. It is easy for young men
to sell all their chances in this world and the world to come for
the excitements of the drink-shop, the betting-ring, and the
lewdnesses of the streets. It is easy for young fools to sell the
Bible, the faith, and all the truths for which the martyrs died,
just to gain the cheap reputation of being modern, up-to-date,
independent free-thinkers, and that other fools may pat them on
the back and tell them how clever they are. And it is easy to
sell the last rewarding sentence of the Great Judge and King for
the paltry toy, the painted gewgaws of the prince of this world.

2. When we sell the truth we always make a bad bargain, just
as in buying the truth we always make a good bargain. In all
other bargains, the gain of one party is loss to the other, but in
this bargain there is only gain and no loss at all; the buyer
gains, and yet no seller loses. So the sale of the truth is of all
bargains the worst and the most foolish. For in other sales,
although somebody may lose, yet somebody gains. But when the
truth is sold, there is nothing but mere loss ; no man is, no man
can be, the better for the sale of the truth :

Vendentem tantum deserit et minuit :

" Only the seller grows the worse ; there is no buyer grows
the better."

^ Man parted with the truth of God in the garden of Eden,
when he believed the lies of the devil, and disobeyed the strict
injunction of his Maker. Then was the truth lost, then was it
" sold," and with it man lost the dignity of his nature — the bright-
ness of his future hopes and prospects, and the peace and happiness
of his mind. The command had been of the simplest nature —
" Thou shalt not eat of it, neither shalt thou touch it, lest thou

340 BUYING AND SELLING OF TRUTH

die." But the disobeying of that simple command entailed con-
sequences the most terrible ; he did eat, and the great poet of
England sketches the result, even to inanimate nature, in a picture,
perhaps, not at all overdrawn : —

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat,

Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe

That all was lost. . . .

Sky loured, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin

Original.

And what did man get in return for his sale of the truth ? He
got a dark and clouded intellect, an alienated and corrupted heart,
and a soul dead in trespasses and sin. He got all the misery,
wretchedness, and woe that have been since blighting earth, and
earth's fairest scenes, and which still appear in the dark prospec-
tive opening of eternity; and he got the beauteous work of
creation, that had hitherto lain smiling under the sunshine of
Heaven's blessing, blasted by the withering curse of the Great
Eternal.^

3. The man who cannot see the priceless value of truth is
always capable of selling it. That is the logic of history. That
is the tragedy of materialism. Judas sold his honour, his place
in the brotherhood, the great trust of his life, and the very love
of God. Men little think what impiety, treachery, and shame
lurk beneath the materialistic appraisement of life. This is
peculiarly a peril of the city. Those who till the soil and wait in
field and garden for God's sunshine and His raiu have all about
them a sacrament of the priceless things. But those who dwell
in the city, amid so much that is artificial, so much that is not
easily suggestive of the unseen sources and spiritual values of life,
may perhaps think themselves in special danger of judging earthly
judgments. But, after all, whether a man drive a ploughshare
or drive a bargain, there is but one way of escape from the peril
of the earthly view and the earthly valuation — a peril never far
from the hearts of the children of men. And that is in the evangel
of the grace of God.

^ Art has fought in vain with the coarse and stubborn material-
ism of the world, ^stheticism, with its eclectic discipleship and

1 J. Gregg, The Life of Faith, 76.

PROVERBS XXIII. 23 341

its demand for a measure of intellectual reJSinement, has never been
able to make the plea for the priceless a real factor in the life of
a workaday world. Only Christ can do that. In His cross He
has revealed life to us as the priceless gift of God to every humble,
lowly, penitent, and obedient heart.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.

If once a man has come empty-handed to the mercy of God in
Christ ; if day by day he stretches out these same empty hands
to the Giver of life ; if his heart has tasted of the fulness awaiting
him beyond the voices of the market and the pledges of the
world — then beauty and truth and love and all the spiritual
reality of life are his, and the basal plea for the priceless is for
ever wakened and answered in his soul.^

^ The state of perfect love, expressing itself in perfect
Tightness of thought and deed, may be unattainable on earth, but
nothing lower than the search for this ideal can satisfy the yearn-
ings of a soul such as was Florence Nightingale's. She had the
Hunger for Righteousness. " The crown of righteousness ! " she
wrote to Miss Nicholson (May 1846). " That word always strikes
me more than anything in the Bible. Strange that not happiness,
not rest, not forgiveness, not glory, should have been the thought
of that glorious man's mind, when at the eve of the last and
greatest of his labours; all desires so swallowed up in the one
great craving after righteousness that, at the end of all his
struggles, it was mightier within him than ever, mightier even
than the desire of peace. How can people tell one to dwell
within a good conscience, when the chief of all the apostles so
panted after righteousness that he considered it the last best gift,
unattainable on earth, to be bestowed in Heaven ? " *

' P. C. Ainsworth, The Pilgrim Church, 59.

' Sir Edward Cook, T]ie Life 0/ Florenu Nightingale, i. 51.

The Golden Mean.

943

Literature.

Dewey (0.), Works, 272.

Horton (R. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositor's Bible), 395.

Knight (G. H.), Abiding Help for Changing Days, 19.

Rix (H.), Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, 135.

Tholuck (A.), Hours of Christian Devotion, 318.

Voysey (C), Sermons, xiii. (1890), Nos. 8 and 9.

Warschaner (J.), The Way of Understanding, 62,

Waylen (H.), Mountain Pathways, 55.

Christian World Pulpit, xxxix. 101 (J. J. Ingram) ; Ix. 397 (E. H.

Eland) ; Ixii. 34 (J. M. E. Ross).
Preacher's Magazine, viii. 377 (R. Brewin).

.444

The Golden Mean.

Give me neither poverty nor riches ;

Feed me with the food that is needful for me.— Prov. xxx. 8.

This is the prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh. Of Agur himself
we know nothing, except that he seems to have been the author,
or editor, of the short collection of pithy sayings contained in this
chapter, including this prayer. We do not know the circum-
stances out of which the prayer was spoken. We do not know
whether his request was granted to him. But we shall all agree
that it is one of the sanest and most prudent prayers ever put on
record. The prayer reveals the man, and we may judge from it
that Agur was a somewhat shy, diffident, cautious man, the kind
of man who would rather have the middle of a safe highway than
the risky excitements of peak and precipice.

^ Supposing that our private prayers, like the Private Devo-
tions of Launcelot Andrewes, could be given to the world after
we are dead and gone, what sort of appearance should we present
to posterity ? It is well that the prayers of most of us are heard
only by God, who is very merciful, who is very silent and keeps
our secrets well, who is too wise to grant all the requests of His
ignorant and foolish children.^

The Extremes of Fortune.

*'Give me neither poverty nor riches."

1. The one extreme from which he shrinks is wealth. We are
confronted at the outset by much misunderstanding as to what is
wealth, and what is poverty. Vast numbers of poor people con-
sider other people rich because they live in larger houses and

» J. M. E. Ross.

345

346 THE GOLDEN MEAN

spend more money and live more luxuriously than themselves.
Now it is strictly true that a great many persons who are thus
reputed to be rich are in reality poor; they are really unable
without great care to make both ends meet. The expenses to
which by their position they are inevitably exposed are either
only barely covered by their incomes, or they have to make up
large deficiencies by annual draughts on their capital. On the
other hand, many among the so-called rich make a great mistake
in exaggerating the wants and miseries of the so-called poor.
They often pity people who live on a lower pecuniary level than
their own, but who are yet able without any pinching or privation to
live very comfortably and to pay their way and even to put by
annually a moderate share of their earnings. Such as these
are not poor at all, even though they are not rich. The envy of
poor men towards the rich and the pity of rich men towards the
poor are alike often grossly misplaced, and if they did but know
the secrets of each other's lives the envy and the pity would be
reversed, the poor would pity the rich and the rich would envy
the poor.

(1) Wealth is not an evil in itself. — There is no reproach in
wishing, by one's own honourable exertions, to rise from the
ranks of ill-paid or slenderly-paid labour, to make and keep a
comfortable home for those nearest to one, to have no need for
material anxieties, to have a margin for books, for music, for
travel, to be able to contribute to religious causes and help to
support this or that movement one has at heart. To be able to
do these things is a very creditable ambition; to take that
ambition away would be to cut at the very root of civilized
society. The duty of industry, on which the writers of Proverbs
so strongly insist, is reinforced by the reflection, " He becometh
poor that dealeth with a slack hand : but the hand of the diligent
maketh rich." The reader is admonished to lay by for the
inevitable rainy day, when some extra resources will be wanted
and be found to make all the difference, in an aphorism like the
following : " The rich man's wealth is his strong city : the destruc-
tion of the poor is their poverty." And lest a man should rely
overmuch on his own powers and the strength of his own exertions,
and forget the Giver of all, we read : " The blessing of the Lord,
it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow therewith." Now in all

PROVERBS XXX. 8 347

this there is a perfectly undisguised appreciation of ownership
and its solid satisfactions : to be out of the reach of carking care,
of sordid anxieties, so that a man may have his energies free for
something else than the dreary struggle to make ends meet — this
is, in the frankest manner, held up as a consummation devoutly
to be wished, and the counsel of these old-time sages is that men
may take thought to attain it,

^ Kuskin compares wealth to a river. There are rivers which
overflow their banks and create malarial swamps that load the air
with pestilence, while they might, by engineering skill, be directed
and controlled so as to bring a blessing instead of a curse. So,
he says, wealth may be " water of life," or, if it is not wisely used,
it may be " the last and deadliest of all plagues." ^

^ It is worth while remembering that the gentle Charles
Lamb, who was as far as anyone could be from a passion for
riches, saw in money the equivalent of " health and liberty and
strength," while Plato could soberly state that " the possession of
wealth contributes greatly to truth and honesty." You have only
to put it to yourselves negatively — the lives of men, women, and
children that might be saved year-in and year-out but for the
lack of means to purchase medical attendance, strengthening diet,
sojourn in a sanatorium — to appreciate Lamb's point of view ; it
is perfectly true, and why not admit it, that there are hundreds of
thousands of deserving folk in this land of ours who would say —
and that in respect of a very trifling increase of income —

Oh the little more, and how much it is !
And the little less, and what worlds away ! *

(2) But the possession of wealth is a constant peril. — Living in
continual enjoyment of those luxuries and pleasures which wealth
procures tends to cultivate the animal rather than the spiritual
part of our nature. Satisfaction with the good things of life, as
they are called, has a tendency to make the soul slumber and
forget its immortal obligations to itself. If we have all we want,
we shall seek and find pleasure only in those things which wealth
can purchase. We cannot easily rise above the low ground of
animal desire and gratification. Our thoughts and actions are so
engrossed in finding fresh avenues for indulgence or excitement
that we have little energy left for spiritual and moral aspirations.
Then, further, this constant indulgence brings with it a sense of

* J. M. E. Eoss. " J. Warschauer, Tfu Way of Understanding, 67.

348 THE GOLDEN MEAN

independence, an unmanly pride, a habit of trusting only in our-
selves and in our own resources, which destroys, in time, all sense
of dependence on others and on God. Agur felt this when he
prayed, " Give me not riches, lest I be full, and deny thee, and
say, Who is the Lord ? " Our wealth is apt to take the very place
of God in our heart's love and trust. Our money, and not God, is
in all our thoughts. We are happy because it is there and seems
safe and inexhaustible. We reckon our lives by what we enjoy
through its means, and not by any progress or growth of the soul.
Whenever wealth is to us of supreme importance, be sure it is
eating out the very vitals of our spiritual life.

^ In a remarkable work entitled The Tree in the Midst, Dr.
Greville MacDonald has recently furnished a striking illustration
of the truth that Nature is against the luxury that preys upon
society. He gives an account of the process of evolution and the
secondary laws which it involves; and in speaking of luxury, he takes
as an example the prehistoric monster known as the ichthyosaurus.
The ichthyosaurus was one of a whole series of creatures, horrible
in character, function, and form, which existed in an early stage
of the earth's history. It was a reptilian fish, thirty feet in
length, with the backbone and tail of a fish, the jaw of a crocodile,
and the skin of a whale. Its eye was held in a socket eighteen
inches in diameter and was protected by an armour of bony plates.
It had a most extraordinary range of vision, and it could see in
the dark. This monster, therefore, was highly gifted. It was, in
fact, actually in advance of its age. It had points of advantage
not existent in any other creature at that time. It anticipated
the higher possibilities in structure. It was far on in the line of
evolution. Why, then, did it disappear? Why was not the
process of evolution continued along that line ? Why is it now
an extinct creature, telling us its story only by the petrified
remains of its terrible body which are dug out from its rocky
grave ? Most significant is the answer to this question. It died
out because life was too easy for it. The world did not desire it.
It did nothing but feed and propagate its kind ; and it did this
with no effort on its own behalf. It was undesirable from the
point of view of upward evolution. That this was the truth con-
cerning it is proved by its remains. There is evidence of its
swallowing fish and reptiles in quantity far larger than it could
digest, far larger than could be necessary for its own maintenance
and the transmission of its species. Its awful jaw, its enormous
stomach, its impenetrable armour, its great fieetness, made other

PROVERBS XXX. 8 349

creatures such an easy prey to it that labour or painful effort was
an experience it never knew. Its only enemies were its prey;
and these enemies were altogether powerless to resist it, while its
food was always superabundant. And so the ichthyosaurus died
out. It died of too much ease. Its extinction was the inevit-
able result of its luxury. Vital energy began to ebb ; structural
refinement did not increase, because it was not wanted;
the size and strength of the monster meant diminished need
for intelligence, and the ascent of intelhgence was checked.
Nature was against it. It transgressed the fundamental law of
upward-moving life, and it was swept into the limbo of forgotten
things.^

(3) Money creates wants as well as meets them. — As a rule, "where
goods increase, they are increased that eat them." The more a
man has, the more he is called to part with ; and the deeper his
pocket, the more constant is the drain upon it. The more pos-
sessions a man has to carry with him through life, the weightier
is his burden, not the lighter. History tells us that the Spartans
at one time had a practice of coining all their money in iron, that
so the people might be discouraged from avarice by feeling that
every addition to their money meant an added weight to bear.
How true are the wise man's words when he says that the
abundance of the rich man's possessions " will not suffer him to
sleep." For money, if itself " a defence," also requires a defence
for its safe-keeping. And with all his watchfulness a man cannot
sometimes prevent his " riches making themselves wings and
flying away." Wealth at the worst is a source of danger, at the
best a source of care.

^ I do not know nor desire to know if theologians have yet
come to a scientific conclusion with regard to the poverty of
Jesus, but it seems evident to me that poverty with the labour of
the hands is the ideal held up by the Galilean to the efforts of
His disciples. Still it is easy to see that Franciscan poverty is
neither to be confounded with the unfeeling pride of the stoic, nor
with the stupid horror of all joy felt by certain devotees; St.
Francis renounced everything only that he might the better
possess everything. The lives of the immense majority of our
contemporaries are ruled by the fatal error that the more one
possesses the more one enjoys. Our exterior, civil liberties
continually increase, but at the same time our inward freedom is
^ H. Kix, Sermons, Addresses, and Essays, 161.

350 THE GOLDEN MEAN

taking flight ; how many are there among us who are literally
possessed by what they possess ? ^

2. The other extreme that Agur would be delivered from is
poverty. The thought is of dire poverty, of sheer destitution, or,
at least, of that precarious livelihood that is always on the verge
of want, and is therefore oppressed with the ever-haunting fear of
the distress which can never be quite out of sight.

(1) Poverty has this great advantage over wealth, that it
compels to honest labour, it guards and protects the soul from the
thousand vices of idleness by pre-occupying the heart and hands
with good wholesome work ; the body healthfully wearied by honest
toil, even if it be never so hard, is rewarded by peaceful slumber
when the day's work is done. " The sleep of a labouring man is
sweet, whether he eat little or much : but the abundance of the
rich will not suffer him to sleep." It is no curse indeed, but the
greatest blessing ever sent upon an ignorant and childish world, to
be forced to labour that we may eat.

But the thought in the text is the evil influence of extreme
poverty on character. There are currents of influence that
originate in the material environment of a man's life and yet flow
in upon his very soul, helping or hindering his spiritual life. Man
has a body and a soul ; at least, so we roughly and popularly divide
his complex nature. But body and soul are not independent;
they act and react upon each other. Spiritual coldness may
sometimes have its physical causes. We may, Faber says, " attri-
bute to the wiles of Satan what is really a matter of nerves or of
digestion " ; and a body that is either pampered and indulged or
ailing and emaciated and fatigued may have a depressing effect
upon the moral life. It is only stating the same truth a little
more broadly to say that a man's temporal circumstances may
influence for good or evil his spiritual prosperity ; you cannot
draw a sharp line of cleavage between temporal and spiritual
affairs any more than you can between body and soul. And we
may find in the outward circumstances of our lives some of the
stepping-stones by which we rise to heaven, or some of the
temptations that drag us to destruction.

There is an extreme of poverty which seems as unfavourable

^ P. Sabatier, Life of St. Francis of Assisi, 126.

PROVERBS XXX. 8 351

to the higher life as the extreme of riches. It may be such as to
expose one to almost irresistible temptation, " lest I be poor and
steal." If food and warmth are not obtainable by honest means,
is it wonderful that poor souls sometimes take a short cut and
transgress ? And even if that gross temptation is avoided,
temptation comes in other forms, more subtle but equally strong.
The constant anxiety, the ceaseless worry, the endless battle with
the wolf at the door, may create a weary, listless, hopeless frame
of mind that has not energy enough to respond to the call of God.

(2) Poverty fosters bitterness. The poor are tempted to
blaspheme; not always, perhaps, against Him whom they call
"God," but against the Divine order of the universe which
permits so fearful a thing as starvation or want. The world
seems all wrong. Man is hard and cold, and the very universe
seems cold and hard as well. There is no pity in the heavens.
The soul of the poor is embittered ; and that is a dreadful
thing, a spiritual disease. You know that a steel spring will
stand a certain amount of strain, you may test it up to a certain
point, and it will contract, expand, rebound as much as you
please. But in every case there is a point of maximum strain ; and
if you pass that, your spring loses its power to recover itself, it is
spoiled for further use. And the human soul also will stand a
great many burdens and buffetings ; it has a wonderful elasticity
of courage, and patience of hope, and power of recuperation. But
there seems to be a point beyond which these things are almost
impossible, a point where men and women just give in. To
change the figure, they are no longer swimmers breasting the
current; they are driftwood floating with the stream. Indeed,
they can hardly be said even to float ; they are utterly submerged
by circumstance, and their capacity for faith and hope and
spiritual conflict seems to have gone under with them.

Tl Do you remember the passage in The Saint's Tragedy, where
Count Walter and the Abbot are discussing the condition of the
poor ? " There," says the Abbot — " there we step in, with the
consolations and instructions of the faith." "Ay," answers the
Count, "but ... in the meantime, how will the callow chick,
Grace, stand against the tough old game-cock, Hunger?" The
question is a pertinent one. It goes without saying that heaven
is not made of bread and butter, or of stone and lime, or of parks
and recreation grounds, or of anything else that can be purchased

352 THE GOLDEN MEAN

for money or provided by civilization. Good wages and good
houses, liealthy conditions of work, facilities for education and
pleasure, will not necessarily save men from their sins. But the
lack of these things tends to the loss of self-respect, the decay of
the soul's energy, the stunting of that part of man's nature
which lives " by admiration, hope, and love." ^

% To his friend, Mr. C. E. Maurice, Morris writes : " In
looking into matters social and political I have but one rule, that
in thinking of the condition of any body of men I should ask
myself, ' How could you bear it yourself ? what would you feel
if you were poor against the system under which you live ? ' I
have always been uneasy when I had to ask myself that question,
and of late years I have had to ask it so often that I have seldom
had it out of my mind : and the answer to it has more and more
made me ashamed of my own position, and more and more
made me feel that if I had not been born rich or well-to-do I
should have found my position wwendurable, and should have been
a mere rebel against what would have seemed to me a system of
robbery and injustice. Nothing can argue me out of this feeling,
which I say plainly is a matter of religion to me : the contrasts
of rich and poor are unendurable and ought not to be endured by
either rich or poor. Now it seems to me that, feeling this, I am
bound to act for the destruction of the system which seems to me
mere oppression and obstruction. I am quite sure that the change
which will overthrow our present system will come sooner or
later : on the middle classes to a great extent it depends whether
it will come peaceably or violently. If they can only learn the
uselessness of mere overplus money, the poisonousness of luxury
to all civilization, they will not be so likely to cry out ' confisca-
tion and robbery and injustice ' at a system which, while it pro-
poses to give to every man what he really needs, will have no call to
take from any man what he can really use : in short, what we of the
middle classes have to do, if we can, is to show by our lives what is
the proper type of a useful citizen, the type into which all classes
should melt at last." ^

II.

The Sufficient Poution.

" Feed me with the food that is needful for me."

The literal translation of this clause of the text is, " Give me
to eat the bread of my portion — that which by God's providence

> J. M. E. Ross. a J. W. Mackail, Ti^e Life of WUliam Morris, ii. 113.

PROVERBS XXX. 8 353

is determin(3d for me." This is not a definite petition for
the needs of the coming day, such as we find in the Lord's Prayer,
but a casting of one's self on the Divine love, in readiness to
take what that love assigns. The Septuagint gives, " Appoint for
me what is necessary and what is sufficient."

1. Agur pleads for the golden mean, neither poverty nor
riches. It is true that he may serve God in either, but he will
serve Him best in that middle state in which he is neither poor
nor rich. And it is in this fact that we find the warrant for this
prayer of Agur. It is but a lawful desire to wish to serve the
Lord under the most favourable conditions. We are not all
called to be moral adventurers, craving the post of greatest risk
that our fidelity may have the greatest honour. That would
savour of spiritual pride. Our undeniable infirmities and Satan's
undeniable strength counsel a more modest course than that.
When once we have resolved to do our best in any circumstances,
we certainly may ask to be favoured with the easiest. Our Lord
Himself taught us to pray " Lead us not into temptation," before
He added the words " Deliver us from evil." So the prayer of our
text is lawful and in every way expedient, " Give us neither
poverty nor riches."

^ William Watson's translation of one of Horace's odes gives
Agur's meaning to a nicety :

Who sees in fortune's golden mean

All his desires comprised,
Midway the cot and court between

Hath well his life devised ;
For riches hath not envied been.

Nor for their lack, despised.

2. But where is the standard that settles the proper measure
of worldly prosperity ? The settlement of that question largely
decides the value and the applicability of everything that can be
said on this engrossing topic. To speak of " neither poverty nor
riches" is to speak indefinitely, for men's opinions as to what
constitute these two states vary as widely as the poles. What
one calls riches another would call poverty. Eiches may mean a
million a year or a hundred, and poverty a penny a day or a pound.

PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 23

354 THE GOLDEN MEAN

What is the determining law and the proper point of view ? You
will find this if you notice the hint this passage gives us as to
the proper designation of our property — "Feed me with food
convenient for me." The lawfully expanded meaning of these
words is — Apportion my possessions to my needs, my means to
the ends of my being. And thus we are presented with this truth :
A person has the proper measure of temporal wealth when he
has sufficient to enable him to do the proper work of life. Thus
the question as to what is riches and what poverty is not a
question to be decided by either feeling or opinion. That we
think we have too little and want more is beside the point. It
is the proportion of means to ends that is the question. Our
possessions are not simply sources of enjoyment ; they are instru-
ments for service. Our business in this world is to do the will of
God, and not to please ourselves. Our kind of service, of course,
varies — varies almost as widely as do our characters. And as our
duty varies, it follows that our necessary means will also vary.

Let no man create all sorts of artificial obligations and un-
necessary work, and then protest that his means are unequal to
his needs. Let no man thrust himself into a station of life for
which he was never intended, and then say he must live up to
his position in society. Let him not create all sorts of lofty tastes
and extravagant modes of living, and then think himself too poor
because his possessions are not equal to these new inflated notions.
Our means should be adjusted to our providential lot, not to our
factitious circumstances. Life's obligation and life's glory lie in
filling the space appointed by God, in doing well the task pre-
scribed by Him, and in making the most, for our own good and
the world's, of what He has given us, whether it be little or
whether it be much.

3. But the prayer of Agur does not carry us far enough. The
ancient world possessed very little idea of causation; the
antiquated East of to-day is still almost totally devoid of the
idea. The text shows how the matter was regarded in pre-
scientific times. The man of old sought for the roots of poverty
and of riches, not in human arrangements or in physical
environment, but in the dispensation of God. " Give me," he
says, " neither poverty nor riches." Perhaps, on the whole, an

PROVERBS XXX. 8 355

industrious man would be more likely to thrive than a sluggard ;
but often and often drought or a storm sent by God would cancel
all his thrift. It was, after all, God who settled the lot of man.
Poverty aud riches came from Him. For the old Hebrew an
omnipotent God held in the hollow of His hand the fate of the
individual man. He meted out to him poverty or wealth, with
all that these might mean to soul or body.

The modern outlook is different. God in these latter days
has revealed Himself as law. He works through Nature and the
rules of Nature. He reveals His action as cause and effect. His
faithfulness never swerves. There is nothing arbitrary in what
He does. We look for the causes, and we know that they will fit
the effects. We recognize, too, in these latter days what the
ancients did not at all understand — that the individual is the
product of society. If we see prevailing poverty, we are certain
that it is due to social conditions. If we see overweening and
plethoric wealth, we are sure that something in the social system
produces or allows it. To us a man is not an isolated person ; he
is a member of society. God works not only through nature as
a whole ; He works through humanity as a whole. And so we do
not think it sufficient to send up a prayer to God : " Give me
neither poverty nor riches " ; we know that we must ask why He
gives us poverty or riches, and how He is to be prevented from
giving us such poverty — how He is to be hindered from making
us so disastrously rich. In other words, when we have duly
weighed this saying of Agur's, we may come to see that among all
the pressing religious and spiritual problems of our day, this also
must be entertained and solved — How to secure a more equable
distribution of wealth, so that the extremes of wealth and poverty
shall disappear, and all shall be fed with the food that is needful
for them.

We are, after all, not mere driftwood. We cannot change the
flow of the stream, it is true, but we can battle against it ; and
there are many matters in which we can effectually act in a spirit
contrary to the spirit of the world. We can sometimes soften the
rivalry which is the world's great principle. We can often act in
co-operation and fellowship even in business matters. We can
humanize our relations to our employees. If we have the mis-
fortune to be very poor, we can guard ourselves from servility, we

356 THE GOLDEN MEAN

can cultivate a free and independent spirit, and we can watch
against bitterness and envy. If we have the still greater mis-
fortune to be very rich, we can anxiously study how to give away
our wealth without harming those to whom we give.

^ The spirit of sacrifice is, we can see, the revelation of a
larger life ; and because it is so, it is also a revelation of victorious
power. The life is one, and through its action soul can reach
soul. We have all been able from time to time, in the most
expressive phrase, to enter into the griefs, the wrongs, the failures,
of others, and as we have done so, we have found within our reach
a power of relief and restoration proportioned to our power of
sympathy. If we may dare to use the phrase, there is a virtue
which goes out from him who truly feels for another to the object
of his love, not without effort, not without loss. We must feel
that which we alleviate. There is a sense in which we must pay
for all we give. The instinctive pleasure which is felt in natural
gifts, in wealth and strength, and beauty and rank and intellect,
is a call and a promise, a call to grateful use, and a promise of
effective influence. But all these things are not in themselves
blessings in which we can rest, but opportunities of blessing.
They must be consecrated in service before they can be a true joy
to their possessors ; and everywhere there is the same condition
of hallowing.^

4. Wise as Agur was, would he not have been wiser still if he
had prayed, " Give me character, that whether thou sendest
wealth or poverty, I may be strong and obedient and victorious " ?
The varying ranks, vocations, and properties of human life are all
evident as moral tests. God is trying our hearts by wealth and
poverty, by neither, and in some lives by both, by what He gives
and what He withholds, in fact, by every temporal circumstance.
And at the judgment day He will deal with us, not according to
the measure of our substance, but according to the nature of our
works. That is the thought which should be uppermost in our
minds, and not, as is so often the case, only vain calculations of
our gains and our losses, of what others have and what we
have not. The question is. Are we using aright that wliich we
have, and glorifying our God with the means He has entrusted to
us ? That is our first concern. And there is surely nothing
which can so check the present-day unhealthy appetite for

' Bishop B. F. Westcott, The Victory of the Cross, 30.

PROVERBS XXX. 8 357

wealth, which can so silence the fretful complainings of the poor,
which can so well impress upon our hearts the wisdom of this
prayer, and which can so conduce to make life practical, content,
and holy as such honest self-inquiry as this.

U Sir Henry Taylor, in his Notes on Life, has a remarkable
passage about money. " So many," he says, " are the bearings of
money on the lives and characters of mankind, that an insight
which should search out the life of a man in his pecuniary
relations would penetrate into almost every cranny of his nature.
He who knows, like St. Paul, both how to lack and how to
abound has a great knowledge ; for if we take account of all the
virtues with which money is mixed up — honesty, justice, gener-
osity, charity, frugality, forethought, self-sacrifice — and of their
correlative vices, it is a knowledge which goes near to cover the
length and breadth of humanity ; and a right measure in getting,
saving, spending, giving, taking, lending, borrowing, and bequeath-
ing, would almost argue a perfect man." ^

^ " I revere," Emerson says, " the man who is riches " ; " is " not
"has." There is an ideal for you, the ideal of character, and,
above all, that character which is formed after the pattern and by
the grace of Jesus Christ. If Christianity had been dependent on
circumstances, it would have died as soon as it was born. But
because it reaches and touches the soul's true life, it lives and is
still the renewing of the world and the hope of the future. The
experience of the ages tells you that Jesus Christ can help you to
be what is good and to do what is right. That is the essential ;
all else is subordinate. And whether you find yourself on the
splendid heights of wealth or in the hard and narrow lot of
poverty, to be what is good and to do what is right is the highest
and the most lasting success. " A man's life consisteth not in the
abundance of the things which he possesseth." " Seek ye first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness ; and all these things shall
be added unto you." Behold a wiser than Agur is here!^

1 E. H. Eland. =« J. M. E. Ross.

Eternity in the Heart.

m

. i^'

,f

Literature.

Allon (H.), in Harvest and Thanksgiving Services, 17.
Beeching (H. C), The Grace qfj^piscopacy, 130. — ';^''

"^^5 ^^0°^^ (P-). Twenty Sermons. 2M7).'-:^
" Jj^ Calthrop (G.), in CTinst, 12. "^^

<5"

Campbell (D.), The Roll-Call of Faith, 21.
Cunningham (R. T.), Memorials, 88.
Fiirst (A.), Christ the Way, 168.
-^all (E. H.), Discourses, 26.
Hamilton (J,), Works, iii, 100.
Herford (B.), Anchors of the Soul, 245.
Jenkinson (A.), A Modern Disciple, 33.
Maclaren (A.), Sermons Preached in Manchester, iii. 209.
Newbolt (W. C. E.), The Gospel of Experience, 1.
Peabody (A. D.), King's Chapel Sermons, 179.
Shore (T. T.), The Life of the World to Come, 23.
Smith (D.), Man's Need of God, 3.
Snell (B. J.), The Widening Vision, 49.
Strong (A. H.), Miscellanies, i. 313.
Swing (D.), Sermons, 166.
Thomas (J.), The Mysteries of Grace, 243.
Christian Commonwealth, xxxii. (1912) 405 (R. J. Campbell).
Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 259 (W. Park) ; 1. 374 (J. Stalker) ; Ixi.
181 (J. W. Walls) ; Ixxiv. 123 (G. Eayres).

se

yoif

3«o

Eternity in the Heart.

He hath made everything beautiful in its time ; also he hath set the world
[eternity— R.V. marg.] in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work
that God hath done from the beginning even to the end. — Eccles. iii. ii.

1. This text, like the book of which it forms a part, has been a
puzzle to interpreters. In the Authorized and Kevised Versions
it is translated " He hath set the world in their heart." But the
word translated " world," which suggests the boundlessness of
space, is elsewhere and generally used to denote the boundless-
ness of time. It is the word used in the phrase " for ever and
ever." The best modern interpreters, therefore, translate it in
this place by the word "eternity." So taken, the text is a
nugget of pure gold, shining out from the dry sand and bare
rock. The book which mourns over the vanity of earthly
things, and sees so clearly the limitations of human knowledge,
recognizes, notwithstanding, a Divine element in man. In
spite of man's ignorance and weakness, God has put eternity in
his heart.

2. By the word "heart" here, as elsewhere, we are to
understand not man's affections alone, but his whole mental and
moral being. The assertion is that all man's powers and pro-
cesses, whether of reason or of will, involve and imply an
eternal constituent, whether man is aware of it or not. And
by " eternity " we are to understand not the endless prolongation
of time, the everlasting continuance of successions, but rather
superiority to time, elevation above successions. God Himself is
not under the law of time — he is " King of the ages." And we
are made in His image. Though we have a finite and temporal
existence, we are not wholly creatures of time. To some extent
we are above its laws. We have " thoughts that wander through

eternity," a consciousness that we are too large for our dwelling-

361

362 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

place, a conviction that the past and the future are ours as well
as the present.

3. The drift of the passage, then, appears to be something like
this : God has made everything beautiful in accordance with its
function and the relation in which it stands to other created
things ; it is beautiful as He sees it, whether it seems so to mortal
eyes or not, for its beauty consists in the truth it expresses and
the spiritual work it does; and, when the time comes for it to
pass away, the effects of its work will still remain, for whatever
God does is done for eternity. " Whatsoever God doeth it shall
be for ever." Also God hath set the feeling of the eternal in the
human heart ; all men have it in some degree, even though they
do not know why they should have it, cannot justify it to their
reason, and cannot find out what God is doing by means of the
things of time from beginning to end. Interpreted in this way,
this great saying at once becomes luminous as" well as pro-
found, and the sage who originally uttered it might have been
speaking for our day as well as his own in thus giving expression
to his thought about the mystery of life. For three distinct
things are emphasized here as present to human experience every-
where. The first is the sense of beauty ; the second, mysteriously
allied to the first, is the feeling of the eternal ; and the third is
our confession of perplexity and helplessness in the endeavour to
find out what the purpose is, if any, which is being effected by
means of the flux and travail of our earthly existence.

^ Commenting on this passage Bacon says : " Solomon declares,
not obscurely, that God hath framed the mind of man as a mirror
or glass, capable of the image of the universal world, joyful to
receive the impression thereof, as the eye joyeth to receive light."
In his funeral sermon on Dr. Livingstone, Dean Stanley worked
out a thought of a kindred kind. The earth, he said, is broken up
by seas and mountains, so that the nations seem destined to live
apart ; but in man's breast there is a thirst for exploration and
discovery, an unquenchable longing to know all that can be
known of the world in which he lives ; and as this desire takes
shape in action, obstacles vanish, and all ends of the world are
brought close together. The fact that the world is thus set in
man's heart, so that he is prepared to explore it, to understand it, to
use and to enjoy it, is surely a proof of design in Nature and of
the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 363

L

The Sense of Beauty.

*' He hath made everything beautiful in its time."

Beauty is the most elusive and analysable thing that enters
within the range of our perceptions. We have the idea of the
beautiful, but we can never say just why any particular thing
is to be pronounced beautiful, or wanting in beauty, as the
case may be. Beauty is God's art, God's manner of working.
Beauty is the necessary conception of the Creator's thought, the
necessary product of His hand ; variety in beauty is the necessary
expression of His infinite mind. In created things there are, of
course, necessary limitations ; but the Creator seems to have im-
pressed upon the things that He has made all the variety of which
they are capable ; no two faces, or forms, or voices, or flowers, or
blades of grass are alike. Even decay and disorganization have
an iridescence of their own. Beauty is not merely the surface
adornment of creation, like paint upon a house, like pictures upon
its walls, like jewellery upon a woman. Beauty permeates nature
through and through ; the microscope, the dissecting knife, reveal
it ; there is no hidden ugliness, no mere surface beauty, in God's
works. If you try to eliminate their element of beauty, you
destroy them. The core of the fruit is as beautiful as its rind.
Beauty is an essential part of the nature of things. Equally with
substance it inheres in everything that God has made. It is
part of the perfection of God's works, part of the perfection of
God Himself ; like truth, like holiness, like beneficence, like
graciousness.

^ Why we receive pleasure from some forms and colours, and
not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we
like sugar and dislike wormwood. The utmost subtlety of in-
vestigations will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles
of human nature, for which no further reason can be given than
the simple will of the Deity that we should be so created.^

^ The nearest approach I can make myself to an explanation
of what beauty is — and even that is no explanation, but only an
index finger pointing towards it — is to say that it is the witness
^ Euskin, Modern Painters.

364 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

in the soul of that which is as opposed to that which seems — the
real of which this world is but the shadow ; it is a glimpse, an
intimation of the Supernal, the state of being in which there is no
lack, no discord, strife, or wrong, and where nothing is wanting to
the ideal perfection, whatever it may be. In other words, it is
the eternal truth reminding us of its presence, though unable with
our limitations to do more than brush us with its wings. Keats
hits the mark in his tender line :

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.*

1. The beauty of the world is something quite distinct from
use; it is something superadded. It is like the chasing of
a goblet which would be as useful if it had no beauty of form.
Whatever may be said of the beauty of true utility it is unques-
tionable that the most intense of the emotions called out in
presence of the beautiful have no connexion whatever with any
thought of the fitness or unfitness of the objects thus perceived
for any particular purpose, or of the correctness of the relation
occupied by them to any larger category or to creation as a whole.
When we feel the beauty of a tree, for instance, or a jutting crag,
we are not influenced in the slightest by anything in their appear-
ance which suggests that they are in their right place or that in
form they obey the line of development which makes in some way
towards a fuller expression of life and power.

^ Ruskin has pointed out that the clouds could do all their
work without their beauty. But they do not. They spread a
perfect panorama of loveliness above us. Sometimes it is the
feathery cirrus cloud, looking, as William Blake said, " as if the
angels had gone to worship and had left their plumes lying there."
Another time the cumulus cloud, with piled, heaving bosom,
throbbing with anger, fills the heavens, soon to find relief in the
lightning flash and the cracking thunder. Or it is the stratus
clouds, placid and level, rising step behind step, looking so solid
that imagination finds it easy to mount them and reach the land
which is afar off, where is the King in His beauty.*

2. Beauty, however, is not without use. It is the messenger
of God's love to the world, showing that all creation "means
intensely and means good." It is the fringe of the Lord's own

1 R. J. Campbell. ■ G. Eayres.

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 365

self, the outshining of His presence, the appeal of His love.
Euskin says that beauty is " written on the arched sky ; it looks
out from every star; it is among the hills and valleys of the
earth, where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmo-
sphere of eternal winter, or where the mighty forest fluctuates
before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage ; it is
spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of the
unsleeping ocean; it is the poetry of nature; it is that which
uplifts within us, until it is strong enough to overlook the
shadows of our place of probation, which breaks link after link of
the chain that binds us to materiality and which opens to our
imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness."

\ Wordsworth was convinced (and he gave his whole life to
preaching the lesson) that to find joy in the sights and sounds of
Nature actually fed a man's heart, and disposed him to the good
life. In the well-known lines written on revisiting the banks of
the Wye after an interval of five years, he expressed what he him-
self had owed to the sights seen on his former visit —

Oft in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration.

So far we should all agree : but he goes on —

Feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love.

Wordsworth believed that happiness found among the things of
Nature, the simple leap of the heart, for example, at the sight of a
rainbow, transmuted itself into acts of kindness ; and this need
not surprise us, if we believe, as Wordsworth believed, that behind
all the outward shapes of Nature lives and works the Spirit of
God, who through these things sheds into our hearts His own
gifts of joy and peace.^

^ Canon Beeching, The Grace of Episcojpacy, 134.

366 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

All earthly beauty hath one cause and proof,
To lead the pilgrim soul to beauty above :
Yet lieth the greater bliss so far aloof
That few there be are weaned from earthly love.
Joy's ladder it is, reaching from home to home,
The best of all the work that all was good :
Whereof 'twas writ the angels aye upclomb,
Down sped, and at the top the Lord God stood.*

3. Beauty has its seasons ; it flushes and fades. Everything in
the world must be in its true place and time, or it is not beautiful.
That is true from the lowest to the highest ; only with the lowest
it is not easy to discover it. It does not seem to matter where
the pebble lies, on this side of the road or on the other. It may
indeed do sad mischief out of its place ; but its place is a wide one.
It may lie in many spots and do no harm, and seem to show all
the beauty and render all the use of which it is capable. But
the things of higher nature are more fastidious in their demands.
The plant must have its proper soil to feed its roots upon, or its
bright flowers lose their beauty, and even there, only in one short
happy season of the year is it in its glory, while the pebble keeps
its lustre always. Higher still comes the animal, and he has
more needs that must be met, more arrangements that must be
made, a more definite place in which he must be set, before he
can do his best. And then, highest of all, comes man, and with
his highest life comes the completest dependence upon circum-
stances. He is the least independent creature on the earth. The
most beautiful in his right time and place, he is the most
wretched and miserable out of it. He is the most liable of all
the creatures to be thrown out of place. He must have all the
furnishings of life, friendships, family, ambitions, cultures of every
kind, or his best is not attained. It belongs then to the highest
and most gifted lives to seek their places in the world. It is the
prerogative of their superiority. Surely it would be good for men
if they could learn this early. It would scatter many delusions.
It would dissipate the folly of universal genius.

^ The perfect woodwork of the carpenter, the strong ironwork
of the smith, the carved marble of the sculptor, the August fields
of the farmer, the cloth of the weaver, the school of the master,

* Robert Bridges.

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 367

the quiet room of the student, the college with its turrets, the
cottage with its hollyhocks and vines, all come with their separate
charm, and help to compose the magnificence of the world. In
the thrilling page of history, the poverty of the learned is seen
now to be as grand as the gold of the merchant or the estates of
royalty. We do not feel that Socrates needed riches, and we are
glad that Jesus Christ had nothing but a soul. The isolation of
His soul made it stand forth like white figures upon a dark back-
ground. His soul reposes upon poverty like a rainbow upon a
cloud.^

^ I cannot feel it beautiful when I find men still at their
business when they ought to be at home with their children. I
cannot feel it beautiful to see the common work of the world
going on on Sundays. I cannot feel it beautiful to see little
children at hard work when they ought to be in school, or aged
people still obliged to toil and moil to the very end. But good
honest work, done with some pride and zest, and done in season,
becomes in a way transfigured, and is " beautiful in its time." *

II.

The Capacity for the Infinite.

" He hath set eternity in their heart."

The doctrine of immortality does not seem to be stated in the
Book of Ecclesiastes, except in one or two very doubtful expres-
sions. And it is more in accordance with its whole tone to suppose
the Preacher here to be asserting, not that the heart or spirit is
immortal, but that, whether it is or not, in the heart is planted
the thought, the consciousness of eternity — and the longing after it.

We differ from all around us in this perishable world in that
God hath set eternity in our hearts. All creation around us is
satisfied with its sustenance, we alone have a thirst and a hunger
for which the circumstances of our life have no meat and drink.
In the burning noonday of life's labour man sits — as the Son of
Man once sat — by well-sides weary, and while other creatures
can slake their thirst with that, he needs a living water ; while
other creatures go into cities to buy meat, he has need of and finds
a sustenance that they know not of.

^ D. Swing. * Brooke Herford, Anchors of (he Soul, 261.

368 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

^ It is said that Napoleon was asked to suggest the subject
for a historical picture that would perpetuate his name, and he
asked how long the picture would last. He was told that under
favourable conditions it might last five hundred years. But that
would not satisfy him ; he craved for a more enduring memorial.
It was suggested that the sculptor might take the place of the
painter, and genius might come nearer to conferring immortality.
Now what was the meaning of that ambitious craving ? It was a
perverted instinct ; it was a solemn and impressive testimony to
the fact that God has set eternity in man's heart. That demand
for earthly immortality was but the echo — the hollow, mocking
echo — of the voice of eternity in the great conqueror's soul.^

1. God has set the eternal in the mind of man. — It is the
essential nature of thought to move out into the boundless, and
to overleap all limitations of time and space. This seems to be
precisely the meaning of the Preacher in the text. "Also he
hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out
the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the
end." The eternal in the mind of man is a movement, not a
fulfilment. He cannot comprehend the boundless, and yet he
must for ever feel the dynamic of it. He is bound on an endless
quest because he is, on the one hand, a finite creature, and
because, on the other hand, God has set eternity in his heart.

^ I had been attracted by Whewell's essay on " The Plurality
of Worlds," where it is argued that our planet is probably the
only world in existence that is occupied by intelligent and morally
responsible persons ; the stars of heaven being a material panorama
existing only for the sake of the human inhabitants of one small
globe. This paradox, we are to-day told, is fully fortified by
" scientific proof " that the earth is mathematically placed in the
centre of the limited portion of space which, according to the
theorist, contains the whole material world. And all this is
taken as an apology for the faith that a Divine incarnation has
been realized upon this apparently insignificant planet, for the
sake of persons otherwise unfit occasions of the stupendous
transaction. But I do not see how science can put a limit to the
space occupied by suns and their planetary systems, or how the
universe can be proved to have any boundary, within a space
whose circumference must be nowhere and its centre everywhere ;
or even a limit within time, in its unbeginning and unending

* A. Jenkinsoii, A Modem Disciple, 40,

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 369

duration. It seems a poor theistic conception to suppose God
incapable of incarnation in man, unless this planet were thus
unique in space and time. With the infinite fund of Omnipotent
and Omniscient Goodness, what need to exaggerate the place of
man, in order to justify his recognition, even according to the
full economy of the Christian revelation ? ^

2. God has set eternity in the moral nature of man. — This was
what the philosopher Kant felt when he affirmed that the con-
templation of the moral imperative filled him with awe, and with
a sense of the sublime like that with which he looked upon the
starry heavens. The moral law of which man is conscious, and
by which he knows himself bound, belongs to the eternal order of
things. In bestowing upon man the stupendous obligation of the
moral consciousness, God has set eternity in his heart. Ill-
success has attended the foolish attempt to deduce the majesties
of the moral law from an accumulation of temporal experiences.
A poor, little, broken code can be made out of the ingenious
manipulation of man's interests and pleasures, and some lingering
sentiments may be tortured out of forced theories of evolution.
But the simple majesty of the moral imperative and the incom-
parable sublimity of moral truth bear a stamp which is known
only in the heavenly places. The simple explanation is all-
sufficing and manifestly true ; the Lord proclaimed His law from
heaven.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong.

And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and
strong.

^ If you came across a piece of gold reef in the midst of a
peat bog you could do no other than infer that it had been
iDrought there by some ancient flood from some great system to
which it truly belonged, or else that down beneath the blackness
and ooze of the peat bog there lay a solid stratum wholly different
in quality and worth. Or again, if, as is the case in some parts of
the world, you saw a valley watered and made fertile by a stream
that seemed to rise from the bowels of the earth, you would want
to know where the reservoir was from which that stream got its
volume. It is not otherwise with the heart of man. Eight in the
midst of the sombre ugliness of our common life lies the gold-

1 A. Campbell Eraser, Biographia Philosojihica, 259.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 24

370 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

bearing rock which tells of a nobler origin for the soul, and of a
stratum of being in which there is nothing of the blackness and
the slime of evil. And in the valley of our cumulative ex-
perience, wherein so much that is gracious and beautiful springs
and grows, watered by the flowing crystal river of spiritual ideals
and aspirations that rises unceasingly from the mysterious deeps
of our being, surely there is that which tells of our eternal home.
It is in our heart because God has put it there, and because it is
the fundamental fact, the most essential fact, of our strangely
complex nature.^

^ Tennyson has drawn a wonderful picture of a man of noble
nature who has been led captive by lust. He knows the right
and admires it. His soul has been filled with aspirations after it.
But this one sin has crept slily in and made its home in his heart ;
it has fascinated and mastered him, so that he cannot shake it off.
Sometimes his better nature rises up ; he tries to break his chains
— he fancies himself free ; but the next time the temptation faces
him he lays down his arms, and is willingly made captive.
Though his passion is gratified he has no peace. The very
nobility of that nature which is now degraded only makes his
misery the greater. The fact that he knows the right so well,
and yet, somehow, cannot be man enough to do it, makes his life
at times intolerable.

Another sinning on such heights with one,
The flower of all the west and all the world,
Had been the sleeker for it; but in him
His mood was often like a fiend, and rose
And drove him into wastes and solitudes
For agony, who was yet a living soul.

Yet the great knight in his mid-sickness made
Full many a holy vow and pure resolve.
These, as but born of sickness, could not live.

"I needs must break
These bonds that so defame me; not without
She wills it. Would I, if she willed it ? nay
Who knows? but if I would not, then may God
I pray Him, send a sudden Angel down
To seize me by the hair and bear me far,
And fling me deep in that forgotten mere.
Among the tumbled fragments of the hills."

» E. J. Campbell.

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 371

Such is man as we fiud him. He sits down in this poor, sinful
world and, gathering everything he can reach around him, he
tries to be content. But there is enough of God and eternity
within him to confound him and make him miserable.^

3. God has set eternity in the spiritual outreaching of man. —
Man is by nature a worshipping creature. He cannot help
stretching forth his hands towards the heavens, and seeking
communion with the everlasting invisible Power which is felt to
dwell there. He cannot rest in temporal companionship and in
the interests of time and place. His spirit summons him to
unknown heights and bids him wistfully wait at the gates of
eternal glory.

^ When Shelley sought to dethrone and deny God, he was
fain to set up in His stead an eternal Power which he called the
Spirit of Nature. To this his spirit went pathetically out in
earnest longing, and to this he rendered a homage indistinguish-
able from worship. God had set eternity in Shelley's heart, and
he could not escape from the impulses of worship in his own
spirit. The spirit of man, even when encompassed with much
darkness of ignorance, must still stand

Upon the world's great altar stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God.^

III.

The Tyranny of Circumstances.

" He hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the
work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end."

1. Here are two antagonistic facts. There are transient
things, a vicissitude which moves within natural limits, temporary
events which are beautiful in their season. But there is also the
contrasted fact that the man who is thus tossed about, as by some
great battledore wielded by giant powers in mockery, from one
changing thing to another, has relations to something more lasting
than the transient. He lives in a world of fleeting change, but
he has eternity in his heart. So between him and his dwelling-
1 W. Park. * J. Thomas, Th« Mysteries of Grace, 251.

372 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

place, between him and his occupation, there is a gulf of dispro-
portion. He is subjected to these alternations, and yet bears
within him a repressed but immortal consciousness that he belongs
to another order of things, which knows no ^'icissitude and fears
no decay. He possesses stifled and misinterpreted longings —
which, however starved, do yet survive — after unchanging Being
and Eternal Eest. And thus endowed, and by contrast thus
situated, his soul is full of the " blank misgivings of a creature
moving about in worlds not realized."

This creature with eternity in his heart, where is he set?
What has he got to work upon ? What has he to love and hold
by, to trust to, and anchor his life on ? A crowd of things, each
well enough, but each having a time; and though they be
beautiful in their time, yet fading and vanishing when it has
elapsed. No multiplication of thnes will make eternity. And so,
with that thought in his heart, man is driven out among objects
perfectly insufficient to meet it.

^ A great botanist made what he called " a floral clock " to
mark the hours of the day by the opening and closing of flowers.
It was a graceful and yet a pathetic thought. One after another
they spread their petals, and their varying colours glow in the
light. But one after another they wearily shut their cups, and
the night falls, and the latest of them folds itself together and all
are hidden away in the dark. So our joys and treasures — were
they sufficient did they last — cannot last. After a summer's
day comes a summer's night, and after a brief space of them
comes winter, when all are killed and the leafless trees stand
silent.

Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.^

2. We may be sure that this contrast between our nature and
the world in which we are set is not in vain. We are better for
having these cravings in our heart, which can never be satisfied
here. Were we without them, we should sink to the level of
creation. We sometimes say half sadly, half in jest, that we envy
the peaceful contented lives of the lower animals. But we do not
mean what we say. We would rather have our human life, with
its hopes and fears, its pathetic yearnings, its storms and its calms,
its immortal outlook, than a life without cares and without hopes

' A. Maclaren.

ECCLESIASTES iii. it ^'j-^,

beyond those of the present moment. Picture some tropical
forest, where animal and vegetable life luxuriates to the full, and
where the swarms exuberant of life know no discontent. Would
you give up your high though unsatisfied yearnings for bright but
unreasoning life like theirs ? Or when, in spring, you wander
through the fields, burdened with cares and doubts and fears
about the future, while the birds, in utter freedom from care, are
filling the air with song, would you exchange with them, and part
with your hopes of an endless life, your longings for the Father in
heaven ? Why, just to ask the question gives it its answer.

^ When Alexander of Macedon, after he had subjugated the
whole of the known world, shed tears that his conquests were over
because there was nothing left for him to conquer, however much
we may disapprove of the ambition to which he had surrendered
his life, yet we admire him more than if he had sat down in selfish
ease to enjoy himself for the rest of his days. The soul that
aspires is nearer to God than the soul that is content and still.
Or if we meet with one who cares for nothing higher than the
worldly wealth and ease and pleasure he enjoys, would you change
your noble discontent for his ignoble content with what " perishes
in the using " ? When we think of the future which lies before
each one of us, we shall regard it as a crowning mercy and blessing,
that, though at present God does not bestow the life we crave. He
does give us longings for it, and refuses to let us forget it, since
even in time "he has set eternity in our heart." It is this
that keeps us from utter degradation ; without it how base we
should be.^

3. This universal presentiment itself goes far to establish the
reality of the unseen order of things to which it is directed. The
great planet that moves in the outmost circle of our system was
discovered because that next it wavered in its course in a fashion
which was inexplicable, unless some unknown mass was attracting
it from across millions of miles of darkling space. And there are
" perturbations " in our spirits which cannot be understood, unless
from them we may divine that far-off and unseen world which
has power from afar to sway in their orbits the little lives of
mortal men. It draws us to itself — but, alas, the attraction may
be resisted and thwarted. The dead mass of the planet bends to
the drawing, but we can repel the constraint which the eternal

* Memorials of R. T. Cunningham, 96.

374 ETERNITY IN THE HEART

world would exercise upon us ; and so that consciousness which
ought to be our nobleness, as it is our prerogative, may become our
shame, our misery and our sin.

This is the marvellous thing, that there is something in the
heart of man constantly and successfully contradicting the sight
of the eyes. For the eyes of man — and no one realized this more
intensely than the Preacher — are weary with the sight of the
things that fade and die. From the first time they look out upon
the world, they behold the sad and continuous process of decay.
All things are in flux, all things decay, nothing continues. Every
voice speaks of mortality. Not only do leaves and flowers wither
and fade, but a more educated eye beholds the stars fade in their
orbits. The man that the eye beholds is a mortal creature passing
swiftly from the cradle to the grave. For the eye of man mortality
is signed and sealed in the dust of the tomb. " The grass withereth,
the flower fadeth : surely the people is grass." What a tremendous
witness to immortality must exist in the heart of man, to scorn
the partial vision of the eye, and to transfigure its scenes of
mortality into the light of immortal hope !

^ " The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord," said the author
of the Book of Proverbs. Yes, a candle, but not necessarily one
lighted ; a candle, but one that can be kindled only by the touch
of the Divine flame. To the natural man immortality is only a
future of possibilities. To make it a future of realities we need to
join ourselves to Jesus Christ. Take Christ, and eternity in the
heart will not be an aching void, an unsatisfied longing, a con-
suming thirst. There is satisfaction here and now. He
that believeth on the Son hath eternal life. Immortality is a
present possession. The present is potentially the future. As
Newman Smyth has said : " Just as the consciousness of the
child contains in it the germ of his manhood, and just as gravi-
tation on earth tells us what gravitation is among the con-
stellations, so eternity in the heart here shows us what eternity
will be hereafter." ^

^ In that delightful book The Hoitse of Quiet there is a striking
passage where The Lift of Charles Darwin is thus characterized :
" What a wonderful book this is — it is from end to end nothing
but a cry for the Nicene Creed. The man walks along, doing his
duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single-heartedness and

- * A. H. Strong, Miscellanies, i. 331.

ECCLESIASTES iii. ii 375

simplicity, and just misses the way all the time ; the gospel he
wanted is just the other side of the wall." ^

Two worlds are ours; 'tis only sin

Forbids us to descry
The mystic heaven and earth within,

Plain as the sea and sky.^

» David Siuith, Man's Need of God, 9. * Keble.

Do IT Well and Do it Now.

vn

Literature.

Barry (A.), Sermons Preached at Westminster Abbey, 35.

Bellew (J. C, M.), Sermons, iii. 34.

Clayton (C), Sermons Preached in the Parish Church of Stanhope, 36.

Eames (J.), The Shattered Temple, 108.

Finlayson (T, C), The Meditations and Maxims of Koheleth, 208.

Kempthorne (J.), Brief Words on School Life, 84.

Leader (G. C), Wanted— a Boy, 88.

Learmount (J.), Fifty-two Sundays with the Children, 127.

Little (W. J. K.), The Outlook of the Soul, 37.

Macpherson (D.), Last Words, 18.

Montefiore (C. G.), Truth in Religion, 133.

Moor (C), The Plain Man's Life, 16.

Morgan (Q. H.), Modern Knights-Errant, 179.

Morrison (Q. H.), Sun-rise, 230.

Snell (H. H.), Through Study Windows, 17.

Spurgeon (C. H.), New Park Street Pulpit, v. (1859), No. 259.

„ „ Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xix. (1873), No. 1119.

Talmage (T. de W.), Fifty Sermons, ii. 322.
Troup (G. E.), Words to Young Christians, 165.
Voysey (C), Sermons, ii. (1879), No. 6 ; xii. (1889), No. 18 ; xvii. (1894),

No. 7 ; xxix. (1906), No. 1.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Day by Day Duty, 207.
Christian World Pulpit, xi. 5 (H. W. Beecher) ; xxxvi. 67 (J. Le Huray) ;

Ixxx. 357 (J. S. Maver).
Church of England Pulpit, Ixi. 388 (E. Warre).
Churchman's Pulpit : The Old and New Year, ii. 443 (J. H. Newman).

378

Do IT Well and Do it Now.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might ; for there is no
work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou
goest.— Ecdes. ix. lo.

Do IT.

" Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it."

Action is the end of existence. We are living only whilst we are
doing. We have not strayed into a fool's paradise where we may
dream out our lives in inglorious idleness; but we have been
sent into a vineyard where we have to dig the soil and sow the
seed from which we are to reap an eternal harvest. No one of us
is exempt from this responsibility. No man is born into the world
whose work is not born with him. There is work for all, and
tools to work with for those who will.

1. Work is the great condition of our physical and mental
well-being. The world is accustomed to look upon it as a curse.
But with Selkirk we are inclined to say —

Blest work ! if thou be curse of God,
What must His blessings be ?

Work was ordained before the Fall, and, this being so, it must be
a necessity of life, for in those happy days there was no super-
fluity. The man who is for ever absorbing and never spending in
work must either cease to live or live viciously. When Alexander
conquered the Persians he said he learnt among other things that
there was " nothing so servile as idleness, nothing so noble and
princely as labour." Labour gives a wonderful satisfaction to
man, and there are few forms of human satisfaction more enjoyable

38o DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW

than the completion of toil. Whatever be the form of our labour,
the satisfaction produced by the completion of an allotted task is
difficult to parallel. In itself, apart from its final results, work
satisfies a great need of human nature, so that there are few men
more thoroughly miserable than those who will not work. Life
is worth living in any case, from its abundant interests, but life
is tenfold more enjoyable when it is largely spent in strenuous
labour.

^ " Every good that is worth possessing," says Professor
James, "must be paid for in strokes of daily effort." And so,
as one of his practical maxims about life and habits, he offers this :
"Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous
exercise every day." ^

^ He would have fully accepted the doctrine upon which Mr.
Herbert Spencer has insisted, that it is a duty to be happy.
Moreover, the way to be happy was to work. Work, I might
almost say, was his religion. " Be strong and of a good courage,"
was the ultimate moral which he drew from doubts and diffi-
culties. Everything round you may be in a hideous mess and
jumble. That cannot be helped: take hold of your tools man-
fully ; set to work upon the job that lies next to your hand, and
so long as you are working well and vigorously, you will not be
troubled with the vapours. Be content with being yourself, and
leave the results to fate. Sometimes with his odd facility for
turning outwards the ugliest side of his opinions, he would call
this selfishness. It is a kind of selfishness which, if everyone
practised it, would not be such a bad thing.^

2. What is true of the body and mind is no less true of the
spirit. The care of the soul is the " one thing needful," and, if
our souls be neglected, our hands are doing nothing as they ought.
The wonder is that people do not see the necessity of work in
religion. They will work for the world, but not for God ; they
will labour to enter in at the gate of success, but not at the gate
of Heaven. They will toil hard in the world's vineyard, and
stand idle in God's. They will lay up treasure for the body,
and leave the soul to starve. They will rise early and so
late take rest for the sake of a short life, and neglect eternity
altogether.

> C. G. Montefiore, Trulk in Religion, 138.

* Leslie Stephen, The Life of Sir James Fitzjaines Stephen, 453,

ECCLESIASTES ix. lo 381

^ Mary Fletcher could not be content to walk with Christ in
white and spend her widowhood in a life of contemplation and of
hope. She could not be contented even in a life of Christian
culture. Hers was an eminently practical and sympathetic
nature. Her piety must find expression in loving ministries of
deed and word. When tempted to desire release from toil and
suffering, longing to depart and be with Christ, the words rang in
her ears, " Would a Christian be in the meridian of glory ?
Would he have his robes shine bright ? Let him stay here and
do service." This fine old Puritan advice bore precious fruit in
Mrs. Fletcher's later years. With unflagging zeal and constant
assiduity, she devoted herself to the service of the people who,
with her, had been so bitterly bereaved. " It is this part of her
life and labours," says Mr. Macdonald, " by which she is chiefly
remembered. There are, indeed, few pictures, in modern Christian
history at least, more impressive than that in which she is the
central figure, a saintly woman of great and varied gifts, in whom
Quaker-like calmness and self-control were joined with Methodist
fervour, for a whole generation a preacher of the gospel and a
witness for Christ among the people of Madeley and the neigh-
bourhood." ^

3. This is the world of service. This is the world of probation
and of preparation for eternity. We are here upon business.
And what is our business ? We are to do whatsoever " our hand
findeth" — whatsoever is the duty allotted to us daily by Him
whose we are. Opportunity must direct and quicken our duty.
That is to be done which our hand findeth to do, that which
occasion calls for. Every moment brings its own responsibilities.
We are all members of one vast body ; and the Lord has set us,
as so many different agents, in that body, as it hath pleased Him.

^ As you grow older you will find more and more how full the
world and our life are of opportunity, and how impossible it is
that, unless by our own fault, they should seem to present a
blank. The real discouragement of life is in our insufficiency for
the duties that crowd in on every side, and are still crying out, as
it were, that they remain undone. But the consoling and power-
ful remedy is that nothing is asked of us beyond our power, and
that, if more is offered than we can do, it is by way of gracious
help to exercise our energies, and so to raise them to the best and
highest state of which they are capable.^

* T. A. Seed, John and Mary Fletcher, 108.

' Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ii. 164.

382 DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW

11.

With thy Might.

"Do it with thy might."

1. " Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," is
a homely proverb of the 'practical man. The most successful
workers in the world are ever the most earnest. Search the
history of those men of name immortal who have spoken so
eloquently to mankind through their paintings, tuned the soul to
melody by their music, and fired its latent energies with their
poetry — men who have shone as suns in their day and generation,
whose peerless minds have enabled them to soar to heights as far
above their grovelling fellows as those in which the majestic
eagle sweeps and circles above the distant earth. .They were all
men who worked with their might. Despite the fact that some
people are more highly gifted with brain and skill than others,
still in most cases the difference between first-rate and second-
rate work is due (at least to a large extent) to the greater pains
and time bestowed upon the first-class work.

^ One of Mrs. Gaskell's favourite texts was : " Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, that do with all thy might." " Just try
for a day to think of all the odd jobs, as to be done well and
truly in God's sight — not just slurred over anyhow — and you'll
ao through them twice as cheerfully, and have no thought to
spare for sighing or crying," was her practical way of explaining
this text.^

^ My father's mental characteristics, if I may venture on such
ground, were clearness and vigour, intensity, fervour, concentra-
tion, penetration, and perseverance. This earnestness of nature
pervaded all his exercises. A man of great capacity and culture,
with a head like Benjamin Franklin's, an avowed unbeliever in
Christianity, came every Sunday afternoon, for many years, to
hear him. I remember his look well, as if interested, but not
impressed. He was often asked by his friends why he went when
he didn't believe one word of what he heard. " Neither I do, but
I like to hear and to see a man earnest once a week about any-
thing." It is related of David Hume, that having heard my
great-grandfather preach, he said, "That's the man for me, he

> Mrs. E. H. Chadwick, Mrs. Gaskell: Haunts, Homes, and Stories, 172.

ECCLESIASTES ix. lo 383

means what he says; he speaks as if Jesus Christ was at his
elbow." 1

2. So highly do we reckon the excellence of strength and
effort that there is a sense in which, by way of paradox, we assert
that from the strenuous sinner there is more to be hoped for than
from the flabby and feeble man of virtue, as if all the glorious
potentialities of human nature were directly associated with and
conditioned by effort and eagerness and strength. If we do not
force ourselves to remember that a man may be zealous in evil as
well as in good, we should be inclined off-hand to allow that
strenuousness was one of the most obvious, as well as one of the
most essential, of human virtues. Whether the good angel is
strenuous may be argued ; that the good man is strenuous admits
of no doubt. It is a fact of experience that slackness almost
changes virtue into vice, while strenuousness almost changes vice
into virtue.

% The Hon. Charles Howard, M.P. for East Cumberland, says
of him : " It always seemed to me that Mr. Moore was the most
thorough man I knew in all that he undertook; and whatever
was the object, whether it was business, fox-hunting, canvassing
at elections, acts of charity, or services of devotion, his heart was
always in his work. He was never satisfied until he had
accomplished all that he had proposed to do. I have no doubt
that this quality of earnest perseverance and shrewdness of
character accounted for George Moore's success in life ; but they
would not have gained for him the love and affection that all felt
for him, were it not for his warm heart and his genial nature." *

3. Again, the words of the text might be taken as a motto
for the Christian life. We do not want to be like the man whose
son was asked whether his father was a Christian. " Yes," said
he, " he is a Christian, but he hasn't been doing much at it lately."
Christian service demands the strenuous and constant application
of hand, head, and heart. The people who throw themselves thus
into their labours belong to the class termed enthusiasts ; but we
may be reminded, for our encouragement, of Emerson's remark
that " every step in the progress of the past has been a triumph

^ Dr. John Brown, Borce Subsecivce, ii. 60.

' S. Smiles, George Moore, Merchwnt and Philanthropist, 506.

384 DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW

of enthusiasm." It is one of the secrets for bringing heaven
near us, for feeling the Infinite with us and within us, to
be whole-hearted in the present task. Thinkers have often
noted this strange fact: that great enthusiasms tend to become
religious. Let a man be mastered by any great idea, and sooner
or later he will find the shadow of God on it. But that is true
not of great enthusiasms alone ; it holds of whole-heartedness in
every sphere. When Luther said, " Ldborare est orare " — " to
labour is to pray " — you may be sure that that great soul did not
mean that work could ever take the place of prayer. He knew
too well the value of devotion, and the blessed uplifting of the
quiet hour with God, ever to think that toil could take its place.
But just as in earnest prayer the heavens are opened to us, and
we are led into the presence and glory of the King, so in our
earnest and whole-hearted toil, clouds scatter, the mists of feelings
and passions are dispelled, and we are led into a peace and strength
and sweet detachment without which no man shall see the Lord.
It is in that sense that to labour is to pray. To be whole-hearted
is to be facing heavenward. And the great loss of all half-
hearted men and women is this, that above the dust and the
stress and strain of life, above the fret and weariness of things,
they catch no glimpse of the eternal purpose, nor of the love, nor
of the joy of God.

^ Olive Schreiner, in one of her weird " Dreams," tells the
parable of an artist who painted a beautiful picture. On it there
was a wonderful glow which won the admiration of all compeers,
but which none could imitate. The other painters said, " Where
does he get his colours from ? " They sought rare and rich
pigments in far-off Eastern lands, but when these touched the
canvas their richness died. So the secret of the great artist re-
mained undiscovered. But one day they found him dead beside his
picture, and when they came to strip him for his shroud they found
a wound beneath his heart. It dawned upon them then that he
had painted his picture with his heart's blood. If you would do
your task of teaching the children, of helping the helpless, feeding
the hungry — if you would have this work to live — then put your
heart into it. Paint your picture with your heart's blood, for
only such will find a place in heaven's Eternal Gallery. " What-
Boever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." ^

' G. H. Morgan, Modern Knights- Errant, 190.

ECCLESIASTES ix. lo 385

^ During the Crimean War, Stanley [who was then Canon of
Canterbury] was walking in Hyde Park with Thomas Carlyle,
who, in bitter mood, was railing against the institutions of the
country. In answer to his twice-repeated question, " What is the
advice which you would give to a Canon of Canterbury ? " came
a reply that began in jest and ended in earnest : " Dearly beloved
Eoger," said Carlyle, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it
with all thy might." And with all his might he strove to find
and to do the right work. He knew that his gifts lay in other
directions than that of business details. His special work con-
sisted in using to the utmost his powers and opportunities as a
preacher; in arousing his fellow-citizens to a keen appreciation
of their privilege of living beneath the shadow of a great historic
building ; in guarding, restoring, and preserving the monuments of
the illustrious dead who lay buried within its precincts ; in impart-
ing to its cold stones the living warmth of human interests ; in
transforming its bare walls into glowing pages of national history.
It was in these directions that he strove to realize to himself the
thought which he so often expressed, that " Every position in
life, great or small, can be made almost as great, or as little, as
we desire to make it." ^

III.
Is THIS THE End?

" For there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the
grave whither thou goest."

The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes — that wonderful book,
which depicts to us the history of a soul groping in at least half
darkness, without any clear light of God — speaks as one who
knows only the present world and the present life, to whom
beyond the grave all is dark, blank, lifeless. To him the business
of every day is simply what our hands " find to do " — he asks not
how — by chance, or choice, or overruling law.

1. The reason he gives for his present counsel is a double-
edged one. If this short life be all that we know or can be sure
to grasp, it may be, indeed, reasonably contended that we must
make the most of it for ourselves and for others, throw all our

* R. E. Prothero, The Life and Correspondence of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, i. 430.
PS. CXIX.-SONG OF SOL. — 25

386 DO IT WELL AND DO IT NOW

energies into it, content if our work remains for good, when we
ourselves are gone. But it may also (in a more ignoble spirit) be
urged that a life so short and precarious is hardly worth living,
and that we had better take it as easily as we may, and " eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die." All the irreligious philosophies of
the present day, as of the past, draw one or other of these two
inferences. Each has plausible reasons to give for itself in those
discussions of the two voices of which modern thought is full.
But the deep, practical instinct of common sense and right feeling
will always grasp the nobler alternative, the one suggested in the
text.

^ The consciousness of living under a Divine authority and
providence leads us to regard our life as a vocation, a call from
God. We can no longer regard our abilities, our opportunities,
our circumstances, as fortuitously concurrent, accidental things.
Taken in their combination they indicate God's will for us ; they
point out the particular work that God would have us to do. Our
faculties and opportunities are gifts from God, to be used in His
service, and for whose right use we are responsible, and must one
day give account. No relative insignificance of the gift will be
accepted as an excuse for its misuse. We are as accountable for
one talent as for ten ; for the use of the eleventh hour, as much as
for the burden and heat of the day.^

2. The motive set forth by the Old Testament thinker was
frequently urged with great solemnity by our Lord Himself ; " No
work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither
thou goest." This is a fact well fitted to take hold of us ; and,
rightly grasped, so far from paralysing energy, it stimulates work.
Death puts an end to all plans and work, and death for every one
is inevitable. From none, indeed, it standeth very far off. We
see that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person
perish, and leave their wealth to others. The wind passeth over
them, and they are gone. Their place knows them no more.
They were full of schemes and projects, hopes and fears, envies
and rivalries — and they are gone. They have broken every tie.
The silver cord has been loosed. They are no longer seen in the
assembly of the congregation, in the concourse of the people.
Their place at home is vacant, and the world, like the " grim

* J. R. Illingworth, Divine Transcendence, 205.

ECCLESIASTES ix. lo . 387

reaper " who Dever sits down to rest, holds on its way. We see
it. We know it. We are sure that this will happen to ourselves.
We stand as if upon precipitous ground, slipping away. And this
brief, uncertain life is all the time we have to sow the good seeds
of eternity. It was upon this that the Jewish writer fixed his
mind. It seemed to him but reasonable that, in the presence of
death, which in other passages he pictures as so uncertain in its
advent, men should cease trifling with time. It was this truth of
natural religion that made him hopeful that they would be
persuaded to put their whole strength into what they did, realizing
that they might never have the chance to do it again in this life,
and that after death there was neither work nor device. And
surely with this solemn thought do the years speak as they roll on
to eternity ; and he into whose heart their voice enters, and who
does not silence it, he it is who will be found giving to worthy
work his best strength and his unconquerable patience.

^ Life to the pessimist is but a series of pains to be experienced.
To the giddy, thoughtless pleasure-seeker it is so much or so little
opportunity for the gratification of selfish desires. To some it is
more than this. It is a series of opportunities for doing good,
and we must make haste to use them all, because our time will
soon be up, and we must away to see whether we have carried
out God's programme. Remember this ; think upon it ; not with
morbid feelings of fear, but because the time is so short, let us
live while we live. Let us work while it is yet day, for when the
day has completed its course, work unaccomplished must remain
undona^

^ G. H. Morgan, Modem Knighls-ErraiUf 191,

Giving and Receiving.

Literature.

Askew (E. A.), The Service of Perfect Freedom, 225.

Bradley (G. G.), Lectures on Ecclesiastes, 190.

Cox (S.), The Book of Ecclesiastes (Expositor's Bible), 247.

Deane (W. J.), in The Pulpit Commentary, 275.

Finlayson (T. C), The Meditations and Maxims of Koheleth, 239.

Hamilton (J.), The Royal Preacher, 197 {Works, iii. 190).

Hodgson (A. P.), Thoughts for the King's Children, 132.

Houchin (J. W.), The Vision of God, 107.

Jerdan (C), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 152.

Matheson (G.), Thoughts for Life's Journey, 231.

Pattison (T. H.), The South Wind, 197.

Plumptre (E. H.), Ecclesiastes, 204.

Stanford (C), Central Truths, 194.

Thomson (E. A.), Memorials of a Ministry, 110.

Thomson (J. R.), in The Pulpit Commentary, 284.

Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, ii. 234.

Wilson (S. L.X Helpful Words for Daily Life, 123.

Wright (C. H, H.), Ecclesiastes in Relation to Modern Criticism and

Pessimism, 223.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 120 (W. J. Hocking).
Church of England Pulpit, xli. 121 (C. A. Jones).
Churchinan's Pulpit : Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, xiii. 465 (C.

J. Vaughan).
Twentieth Centwry Pastor, xxxiii. 13 (J. S. Maver).

W

Giving and Receiving.

Cast thy bread upon the waters : for thou shalt find it after many days.—
Ecdes. xi. I.

1. Theke is considerable difference of opinion as to the sense of
this verse of Ecclesiastes. The old interpretation which found in
it a reference to the practice in Egypt of sowing seed during the
inundation of the Nile is not admissible. The verb shalach is not
used in the sense of sowing or scattering seed ; it means " to cast
or send forth." But there are two other explanations of the
passage for which much can be said.

(1) The view which Delitzsch has taken is a modification of
that formerly held by Martin Geier, J. D. Michaelis and others —
namely, that Koheleth recommends the practice of the prudent
merchant, who sends for his merchandise in ships, which go over
the face of the waters to distant lands, with the expectation that
on their return he will receive his own with an increase. This
view is supposed to be confirmed by the statement concerning the
good woman in Prov. xxxi. 14, " She is like the merchants' ships ;
she bringeth her food from afar," and the words of Ps. cvii. 23,
" They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great
waters." But one sees no reason why Koheleth should suddenly
turn to commerce and the trade of a maritime city. Such con-
siderations have no reference to the context or to the general
design of the book. Nothing leads to them, nothing comes of
them.

(2) The favourite explanation is that the verse inculcates a
liberal charity — " Give your bread to any who chance to need it,
and you will at some distant time receive a reward." If we take
it so, we have a maxim in due accordance with the spirit of the
rest of the work, and one which conduces to the conclusion
reached at the end. The bread in the East is made in the form
of thin cakes, which would float for a time if thrown into a

392 GIVING AND RECEIVING

stream ; and, if it be objected that no one would be guilty of such
an irrational action as flinging bread into the water, it may be
answered that this is just the point aimed at. Do your kindnesses,
exert yourself, in the most unlikely quarters, thinking not of
gratitude or return, but only of duty. And yet surely a recom-
pense will be made in some form or other.

2. The earliest comment on the passage is that of Ben Sira,
who. in a maxim of his, extant only in Chaldee, observes, " Strew
thy bread upon the surface of the water and on the dry land, and
thou shalt find it in the end of days." It will be observed in this
earliest comment upon the verse that the difficulty of considering
the verb to refer to sowing of seed was felt even at that time, and
an attempt made to obviate it by translating the word in a sense
in which it certainly occurs. Bishop Lowth in his work on Hebrew
Poetry has explained the phrase as equivalent to the Greek expres-
sion " to sow the sea." But the aphorism of Koheleth was not
meant as an exhortation to engage in labour though apparently
fruitless. Its signification is better conveyed in the Arabic pro-
verb quoted from Diez by several commentators, " Do good, cast
thy bread into the water, at some time a recompense will be made
thee." Delitzsch observes that the same proverb has been natural-
ized in Turkish, " Do good, throw it into the water ; if the fish does
not know it, God does."

^ A very suitable parallel is quoted by Herzfeld from Goethe's
Westostlicher Divan,

Was willst du untersuchen,

Wohin die Milde fliesst!
Ins Wasser wirf deine Kuchen :

Wer weiss, wer sie geniesst!

A similar interpretation is found in Voltaire. Dukes gives in
his note the following story, quoted from the Kabus by Diez
(Denkwiirdigkeiten von Asien, 1 Th. p. 106 ff.), which, whether it
be a fact or a fiction, well illustrates the meaning of the Arabic
proverb : " The caliph Mutewekkil in Bagdad had an adopted son
Fettich, of whom he was very fond. As the latter was bathing
one day, he sank under the water and disappeared. The caliph
offered a large reward to any one who should recover the boy's
body. A bather was fortunate enough after seven days to dis-
cover the boy alive in a cavern in a precipitous mountain by which

ECCLESIASTES xi. i 393

the river flowed. On investigation, the caliph ascertained that
the boy was kept from starving by cakes of bread borne to him
over the surface of the water, on which cakes was stamped the
name of Mohammed ben Hassan, The caliph, having summoned
Mohammed ben Hassan into his presence, asked him what induced
him to throw the bread into the water. Mohammed ben Hassan
replied that he had done so every day for a whole year in order
to test the truth of the Arabic proverb already cited. The caliph,
according to the story, was so pleased with his conduct that he
made over to him on the spot five villages in the neighbourhood
of Bagdad.^

3. The whole passage in which the text occurs seems to be a
protest against that despondency and over-anxiety which are so
apt to lower our generosity, and to relax our faithfulness to duty.
Beneficence ought to look forward hopefully into the future ; but
it ought not to be over-calculating. Beneficence without hope
loses one of the springs of its energy. Beneficence without
thought may cease to be beneficence in anything but the motive,
and may positively injure where it desires to bless. But thought-
fulness in well-doing is one thing ; anxious calculation is another
thing. Such calculation is apt to rob us of hope, and to depress
our energy. It is likely also to defeat its own ends. For there
are limits to our powers of thought. We cannot with certainty
forecast the future, or foretell the results even of our own actions.
The ways of God are, many of them, mysterious. It is ours to
sow; the harvest is with Him. No doubt we ought to sow as
wisely as we can ; but we ought also to remember that, with all
our wisdom, the harvest may be different from what we anticipate.
If we begin to calculate too much, we shall calculate badly. Let
us therefore do good "as we have opportunity," dealing with
present claims rather than with future contingencies, acting with
hopeful yet unselfish generosity, and with diligent and thoughtful
yet unanxious beneficence. This seems to be the central lesson of
the passage before us.

^ Give not only unto seven, but also unto eight, that is, unto
more than many. Though to give unto every one that asketh
may seem severe advice, yet give thou also before asking ; that is,
where want is silently clamorous, and men's necessities not their

1 C. H. H. Wright.

394 GIVING AND RECEIVING

tongues do loudly call for thy mercies. For though sometimes
necessitousness be dumb, or misery speak not out, yet true charity
is sagacious, and will find out hints for beneficence. Acquaint
thyself with the physiognomy of want, and let the dead colours
and first lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object for
thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily be prodigal
and fear not to be undone by mercy ; for since he who hath pity
on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty rewarder, who observes no
ides [when borrowed money was repaid] but every day for his
payments, charity becomes pious usury, Christian liberality the
most thriving industry; and what we adventure in a cockboat
may return in a carrack unto us. He who thus casts his bread
upon the water shall surely find it again ; for though it falleth to
the bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the prophet, to rise again
unto him.^

The Precept.
"Cast thy bread upon the waters.**

There can be little doubt that this admonition applies to the
deeds of compassion and beneficence which are the proper fruits
of true religion. In times of famine, in cases of affliction and
sudden calamity, it is a duty to supply the need of the poor and
hungry. Almsgiving is the natural, the necessary, expression of
a healthy Christian character. The Christian cannot but be com-
municative of the goods which he has. Almsgiving is not a con-
cession to importunity, by which we free ourselves from unwelcome
petitioners ; it is not a sacrifice to public opinion, by which we
satisfy the claims popularly made upon our place or fortune ; it is
not an appeal for praise; it is not a self-complacent show of
generosity ; it is not, in a word, due to any external motive. It
is the spontaneous outcome of life.

But there are many other ways in which benevolence may
express itself besides almsgiving. The Christian is called upon
to care both for the bodies and for the souls of his fellow-men —
to give the bread of knowledge as well as the bread that perisheth,
and to provide a spiritual portion for the enrichment and con-
solation of the destitute.

^ Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 90.

ECCLESIASTES xi. i

395

1. The Bread of Kindness. — Cast seed on the soil, and you may
reasonably expect a harvest. But to "cast bread upon the
waters " — what good can come of that ? And yet there are many
acts of beneficence which seem quite as unlikely ever to bring any
return to the benefactor. "We are to be kind to others, even
although we can see no ground for hoping that we shall ever be
recompensed by them. There are many cases in which simply
the need of others ought to be our chief motive in well-doing. It
is indeed quite true that mere indiscriminate almsgiving is likely
to do harm instead of good. But here, we shall suppose, is a case
in which we know a man to be in real need, and we are able really
and truly to help him. We are not sure that he will be even
grateful to us. We cannot well conceive of our ever coming into
circumstances in which we shall need his help. Well, let us " cast
our bread upon the waters." Let us be generous without calcula-
tion. Let us do good to the man without any considerations of
personal advantage. Let not our benevolence take the form of a
mere " investment." However unprofitable to ourselves our well-
doing may appear to be, still let us continue to do well.

^ It surely cannot matter to you whom the thing helps, so
long as you are content that it won't, or can't, help you ? But are
you content so ? For that is the essential condition of the whole
business — I will not speak of it in terms of money — are you
content to give work ? Will you build a bit of wall, suppose — to
serve your neighbour, expecting no good of the wall yourself ? If
so, you must be satisfied to build the wall for the man who wants
it built ; you must not be resolved first to be sure that he is the
best man in the village. Help any one, anyhow you can : so, in
order, the greatest possible number will be helped ; nay, in the
end, perhaps you may get some shelter from the wind under your
charitable wall yourself ; but do not expect it, nor lean on any
promise that you shall find your bread again, once cast away ; I
can only say that of what I have chosen to cast fairly on the
waters myself, I have never yet, after any number of days, found
a crumb. Keep what you want ; cast what you can, — and expect
nothing back, once lost, or once given.^

(1) Charity, in the sense of the gospel, is disinterested. The
design, in every act which is entitled to this name, is to do real
good to those who are its objects. The intention of the author of

' Ruflkin, Fors Clavigera, Letter 19 ( Works^ xxvii. 328).

396 GIVING AND RECEIVING

it will invariably be to promote the happiness or to relieve the
distresses of the sufferer ; not to advance his own reputation, to
promote his own selfish purposes, or even to prevent the reproaches
of his own conscience. In a word, selfishness, of whatever kind,
and in whatever form it may exist, is not charity.

^ Lady Blanche Balfour was a person whose thoughts were
not like other people's thoughts, and who could do things which
other people could not do. The Cotton Famine in Lancashire
during the American Civil War stirred her sympathy greatly. As
it happened at the time that her establishment was being reduced,
— probably with a view to her going abroad with her children, —
she used the opportunity to make a novel proposal to them. They
were told that, if they liked to do the work of the house, any
money that was saved in this way would go to the help of the
distressed people. When they agreed to take this up, the house
was divided. The few servants remaining had the use of the still-
room at one end of it to prepare their own meals in, and the
kitchen was made over to Lady Blanche's daughters, who, after
the two eldest had a few lessons from the cook before she left, did
the family cooking, with only the assistance, for the roughest
work, of two quite untrained Lancashire girls, who were brought
from amid the " idle sorrow " of the time in Manchester to stay in
Whittingehame House. Lady Blanche's sons [of whom the Eight
Hon. A. J. Balfour is the eldest] had also work of the house which
they could do allotted them, such as cleaning of boots and knives.
Of course the young ladies were new to cutting up and cooking
meat ; so the meals at first were very irregularly achieved, and
were trying enough even to youthful appetites. They must have
been still more trying to Lady Blanche herself, who was really an
invalid always. But more than one purpose of hers was served.
The help sent to Lancashire was greater by the amount saved in
household expenses; her children had the sense of giving this
share of help through their own labour and self-denial ; and they
had besides a discipline of great value, as no doubt their mother
intended, in the thorough knowledge acquired of details of house-
keeping, and in the check given to dependence on comforts.
Others, perhaps, in her circumstances might have imagined and
planned such a procedure as this ; but few could have carried it
through.^

(2) Bountifulness should distinguish beneficence. The crumbs
which fall from the rich man's table, the scraps which are doled
out at the servant's door, are not to be here accounted of. " The

^ J. Robertson, Lady Blanche Balfour, 25.

ECCLESIASTES xi. i 397

liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he
stand." "Cast thy bread." Let it not be extorted from you.
Let it be given " heartily," " not by constraint, but willingly."
The "cheerful giver" is the acceptable giver. "Freely ye have
received, freely give." Even when our own " daily bread " is
scanty, we are to cast some of it upon the waters whenever there
is a Divine call to do this. A poor widow, who had been reduced
to penury, acted thus one day at Zarephath, a town in the region
of Tyre and Sidon. She shared with the prophet Elijah what she
thought might possibly be her last meal, and she took him home
with her as a guest " for many days." The reward of her
hospitaUty, after perhaps nearly two years, was the restoration to
life of her dead son in answer to the prophet's earnest prayer.

^ Miss Pipe's whole attitude to beneficence of action and ex-
penditure was characteristic. She believed in practical benefit
rather than in charity commonly so called. Her gifts in money
were numerous and generous, but she took great pains to learn how
the money would be used, and often, when some individual or society
was doing what seemed to her valuable work, she would send to
either an unexpected cheque in assistance of what she approved.
The work was just as often scientific, pedagogic, or artistic, as
conventionally charitable, and sometimes took the form of help in
publication in order to preserve the author's aim from inter-
ference ; of help in establishing schools, when she approved of
those who ventured ; of money sent for travelling when the need
was educational. These and similar gifts did not interfere with
a constant liberality to missions, church-schemes and expenses,
to hospitals, work amongst the poor, and especially to such work
as Miss Octavia Hill was doing, in which she warmly welcomed
the high intelligence, the educative processes, the seeds sown for
the future. To her own personal friends she was always and
continuously generous, delighting to find out what they needed or
wished, and to supply it. Some memoranda of her personal
expenditure have escaped destruction, and indicate the splendid
proportion of her giving to others compared with her purchasing
for herself. For instance, in one year she gave away £288, and
spent £14 on dress ; in another, while dress cost £90, giving
reached £363 ; in a third, dress amounted to £58 and giving to
£406 ; in a fourth, dress had grown more costly, reaching £100,
but giving had increased to £485 ; and by 1880, dress had sunk
to £71, while giving had grown to £789.^

^ Life and Letters of Hannah E. Pipe, 194.

398 GIVING AND RECEIVING

2. The Bread of the Gospel. — Though liberality and kindness
are the primary lessons of our text, it may well suggest, as in our
ordinary conversation it does suggest, every kind of work for God.
There is in the world an ever-increasing amount of work done in
the spirit of Christian benevolence, efforts on behalf of the young,
the outcast, the victims of drink, the criminal, the poor, the
afflicted ; efforts that at times seem to be fruitless, and often meet
with lack of appreciation, often with ingratitude, and at times even
with wrath. Those for whom we may have done our best take a
base advantage of kindness, or say to us, like the evil spirit of old,
" Let us alone," and, after all our efforts, are not any the better,
but rather the worse. We are inclined to lose heart and hope
because we see no fruit of our labours. It is to those in such a
condition, who are depressed and think it not worth while to
continue, that such words as the text may apply. Our bread is
to be cast upon the waters. We are to render service — service
that often costs much — to thankless people. We must be content
to work when our work is unacknowledged, unrequited — even
when it is despised. If we serve men in material things,
indifference and ingratitude may be the return ; but this is still
more likely to be the case when we seek to do them the highest
good. People appreciate gold, bread, or raiment sooner than
they appreciate efibrts to raise their mind and character.
Much of the highest, painfullest service wrought for the good
of men — work of brain and heart — is least appreciated. So
many a sincere worker is sad because of the lack of apprecia-
tion, and ready to renounce his self-sacrificing work, seeing it is
so disregarded.

But let us remember how God's work and gifts are imappreci-
ated. The multitude crowds into the music-hall and gazes with
rapture on some vulgar stage scenery painted in glaring ochres,
whilst God's bright landscapes full of perfect beauty solicit their
eye in vain. There is a great crush in the public gardens to
witness an exhibition of fire- works — small tricks in saltpetre ; but
the eager crowd turns its back on the moon walking in brightness
and God's heaven sown with stars. And men treat God's govern-
ment and grace as they do His handiwork, ignoring Him who is
wonderful in counsel, excellent in working. Yet for all this He
does not suspend His beneficent action ; He continues His glorious

ECCLESIASTES xi. i 399

and generous administration, whatever may be the response of
His creatures. He makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the
good, His rain to descend upon the just and the unjust, despite
the thanklessness of the far greater portion of those who are so
richly and undeservedly blessed. How largely the sublime work
of the Lord Jesus is unrecognized ! " Where are the nine ? " is a
mournful question still on our Master's lips. But He does not
fail, neither is He discouraged because of the blindness and heart-
lessness of those whom He suffered to redeem ; He pursues the
thankless with offers of grace and blessing. We are far too
anxious about acknowledgments and congratulations. It is
natural, perhaps, that we should suffer some sense of disappoint-
ment, but have we not considerations an